Om3ga
by Shu of the Wind
Summary: Lan Fan Zhang is a hacktivist. As part of The Cavern, she cracks into the corrupt companies and nepotistic government of Centralis City in an effort to make things better. But when an insidious program breaks into all her files, she has to go into hiding. Her new housemate isn't helping all that much. LingFan, Royai, EdWin, AlMei. Ongoing. Cover art by Dotdotdot.
1. activism and anti-malware

Welcome to  
><strong>The Cavern<strong>

Username:  
>Password:<p>

_Si vis pacem, para bellum._

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Username: **om3ga  
><strong>Password: **2e302#iL**

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Welcome, **om3ga!**

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**liangshan_marsh (02:43:12)**: hey!  
><strong>liangshan_marsh (02:43:17): <strong>didn't think u were coming  
><strong>om3ga (02:43:39): <strong>took a while to get the firewalls set up right. jaloux came knocking again. how is it?  
><strong>liangshan_marsh (02:43:47): <strong>u too then? bastards lurking everywhere  
><strong>liangshan_marsh (02:43:53):<strong> cracked the third firewall  
><strong>liangshan_marsh (02:43:59):<strong> could use u

Lan Fan tapped her thumbnail against her teeth. She hadn't washed her hair in three days. It felt stringy and damp against the back of her neck as she leaned back, and turned the high-power fan by her feet towards the core of her CPU. Her air conditioning had gone out over a week ago, and with all the extra mods on her server, Lan Fan wasn't about to take any chances. Even though she had all of her programs backed up and stored on terabyte drives that she'd stowed in P.O. boxes around the city, there was too much left on her main machine for her to risk it. She grabbed an elastic and tied her hair up at the back of her head, ignoring the tickle of her split ends against the top of her spine. She needed to get her hair cut and redyed. The blue streak by her face was almost completely green, and it needed rebleaching.

**om3ga (02:50:23): **where?

She waited. Marsh was never all that good at responding on time—she had a feeling he forgot, in the midst of coding, that people might be waiting on answers—but for once he was back within a minute.

**liangshan_marsh (02:51:11): **working on the king

Lan Fan sucked in air through her teeth, and then set her IP cycler to running before joining the digital battlefield.

It had been Marsh's idea to hit Bradley Industries. A weapons manufacturer, he'd said, and a major provider for the army. King Bradley, toast of the Centralis bureaucracy. Think about all the things we can pick up from _him_. IronChild had been all for it, his teeth-rotting perfect grammar a cacophony against her screen. It had just been the three of them that night, and as always, they were so in sync it made her hurt. BI was their new target. Lan Fan had sent a PM to snipersight just to see if she wanted to join, but she'd never received a response. It had worried her, until she'd heard from IronChild that snipersight had been hit by Pater three days ago and didn't have the account left to answer. Something had congealed in Lan Fan's gut like old sausage at the thought. snipersight was one of the best The Cavern had to offer; if Pater could shut down snipersight, she didn't want to think what else the bastard could do to others.

Bradley Industries was one of Centralis' biggest companies. About half her building had factory jobs with it. The other half was part of its legal department. Lan Fan sucked her teeth again and then drew up two of her extra firewall programs before opening can_of_worms. That was Marsh's name for it, anyway. She'd coded the worm so it would swallow firewalls and repurpose them within its own skin, a virus that constantly rebuilt itself with the flesh of the body it consumed in order to hide from antimalware programs. Marsh was almost through cracking the fourth firewall; she threw some lines of code at him and they were through. She put her foot on the small fan by her feet and rocked it back and forth in triumph. The fifth firewall was almost ridiculous compared to the others, thinner, the code barely worth the name, and they were through in seconds. Marsh hadn't needed her help after all.

Lan Fan sat back in her chair and deployed her Eater program, one that would go through and extract all Bradley Industry documents in this intranet and torrent them to her own computer in ZIP files. Her processor meant it would only take a few minutes, but since the BI techies had probably figured out their walls had been breached, she had less than that. She sent out another program, the one she'd named herself—_flashbomb_—and set it off somewhere near the financial files. She fancied she could see the IT nerds descend, like crows on something shiny. Her pulse fluttered in her neck. Her computer chimed. She had all the documents.

She was about to close out of Bradley Industries when the computer chimed again, an anxious trill, and her first firewall collapsed.

"Crap," she said aloud, and then again. "Crap. _Crap!" _

She had good firewalls. _Nobody _in The Cavern had been able to break through her firewalls. Pater was slamming through them like a charging bull through tissue paper. She closed out of Bradley Industries, then out of The Cavern, fumbling against the keys. Her palms were all sweaty. She couldn't breathe. "Crap!" she shouted, and as Pater crushed her last firewall she bent down and yanked her extension cord free of the wall. The buzz of her computer went out with a low whine. The fan died.

Lan Fan stared at the black screen, trembling all over, and then wiped the sweat from her eyes.

* * *

><p>The chatroom of The Cavern had been something that she'd stumbled onto accidentally when she was sixteen and bored. It had been right after the death of her grandfather. There had been nights—many, many nights—when she hadn't been able to sleep. Her arm had hurt too badly; she'd had too many nightmares; her new bedroom had smelled too much like paint and dried blood. She'd booted up her dinky laptop and started cracking. Easy stuff, then. Her high school intranet. Grades. Her psychiatrist's email, and then her hard drive. She'd stopped seeing Dr. Chen the day she'd turned eighteen, but she still had access to all of the files. <em>Lan Fan is having difficulty accepting and processing the death of her grandfather. Shows minor signs of depression. <em>("Minor signs of depression" had gone to "moderate depression" had gone to "delusions of grandeur" had become "bipolar disorder," and now Lan Fan had a small pharmacy of half-empty bottles of pills on her desk and a water bottle that was almost perpetually full of soda.)

IronChild had sent her a message from a cycling IP in the week after she'd cracked her school district's shoddy financial records and posted them to the local news blog. Apparently he'd been watching her, though why, she had no idea. It wasn't as though she'd been a particularly benevolent cracker. Before she'd exposed the embezzlement scandal, she'd shut down a few porn websites and sent viruses to cyberbullies, but not much more than that. (Her favorite bully!virus had been the one that had set a GIF file of a baboon slapping its ass on repeat on the monitor while it steadily ate away at all the files on the computer. She still used that one sometimes. Just on government officials instead.) IronChild had disagreed. _You don't like bullies,_ he'd messaged her, after tracking down one of her IM handles at the time, reaper553. _Neither do we._

Bullies had a different definition where The Cavern was concerned. snipersight had a government position; she was best suited to spotting corrupt institutions. Marsh was upper class and hobnobbed with rich businessmen; he'd started scuttling their websites before he turned twelve. IronChild and MetKid were a bit more mysterious than that; they never talked about their past or their positions, but they always came up with the best intel. Lan Fan had picked the handle om3ga because it reminded her of her grandfather, dead in a car accident in the Proctors District, and she'd jumped in with both feet. There were a few other people who cycled in and out of The Cavern—heatcol came in sometimes, and so did WhiskerTeeth01. meatgrinder was a one-in-a-million chance, but the one time they'd done work for The Cavern, they'd slipped in and out of the government mainframe in minutes, and had never been detected. Lan Fan had harbored a professional crush on meatgrinder ever since. Mostly it was just the four of them—Marsh, IronChild, snipersight, and om3ga—and until three months ago, they'd never had any problems further than one or two little Trojans.

Pater was another story. IronChild thought it was a person; snipersight thought it was a program. Marsh reserved judgment aside from _keep the hell away from it_. Lan Fan herself had no clue. Regardless of what it exactly was, it was tremendous. It came out of the 'net like a monster, seizing and consuming whole gigs, whole _terabytes _of data, and as soon as it appeared it vanished again. Every time, a dozen more handles disappeared in its wake. WhiskerTeeth01 had blinked out without a word in the first week it had been lurking. heatcol had vanished too, but snipersight had told them that was intentional; not Pater's fault. And then Pater had hit snipersight. She'd heard chatter on other sights that Pater was after hacktivists, that it was a government program deliberately disarming all avenues of protest within Centralis' firewalls. Others scoffed and said it was just another hacker making an ass of themselves. No one claimed ownership of it, though, and no one denied that once Pater grabbed hold of someone's coattails, they never managed to get away.

Lan Fan tossed back two sleeping pills and swallowed some of her soda before crawling into her unmade bed. Her pillowcase smelled like sweat. Laundry, she thought, and typed a note into her phone. Laundry, grocery run, and then a revamp of om3ga. That handle was dead. She'd have to build a new one, even on The Cavern. Maybe if they were lucky, her cyclical IP addresses had helped, and she'd be able to release all the Bradley Industries information before too much time passed.

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><p>She dreamed of the car crash. Her grandfather in the front of the taxi cab. Lan Fan in the back. The oncoming semi. The blood. Broken glass. Screaming. The twist to her arm. Oil and fire. Burns. Her hair gone. The hospital. Gunshots.<p>

She rolled over, throwing her burned arm over the edge of the mattress, and fell deeper into sleep.

* * *

><p>Sleeping pills always made her hit unconsciousness like a freight train. Her mouth was sticky and her eyelashes crusted shut when Lan Fan finally struggled back to reality. Light staggered through the crack in her curtains, and her room was sweltering. Sweat ran down her face in tiny rivers. She had just rocked to her feet and rubbed her hands over her face when she heard the knock at her door.<p>

"Hold on," she said, and she put on a bra and socks before stumbling down the hall. There was another knock. "Goddammit, I'm _coming_."

She opened the door.

"Miss Zhang?" Lan Fan nodded, slowly. The man was wearing a suit, and sunglasses. Every hair on her body was prickling. She had to slam the door, she thought, staring at him—he was too big and burly not to be some sort of military goon, too prim and proper not to be government. She had to slam the door. Her fingers clenched hard around the knob as he pulled an ID from his pocket and showed it to her. "My name is Alex Louis Armstrong. I'm with the CIC. May I come in?"

Lan Fan licked her lips. Panic dropped into her gut like an atomic bomb. Her whole brain was screaming. _CIC CIC holy damn it's CIC they must have seen something last night must have—_ "You have a warrant?"

He was digging into his coat pocket again to find it when she slammed her front door shut and locked all three padlocks. She didn't wait to hear him call her name again. Lan Fan bolted for her bedroom, slamming and locking that door too, before she seized her backpack off the floor. Underwear, pills, laptop, ID. No time for anything else. She pulled on her asura hoodie as outside her bedroom, she heard something hit her front door like a battering ram. She gave her computer one last glance—no helping it—and then slid open her French doors. No one was in the back parking lot, though she could hear sirens in the distance. She was on the sixth floor—they wouldn't expect her to be escaping this way. Lan Fan swung her legs over the railing of the balcony and scooted to the drainpipe, wrapping her hands tight around it, sliding down a few feet at a time. Rust crusted her fingers. She felt something slice her burned palm. Usually she wore parkour gloves for this, but those were in her backpack, and there was no time.

She heard her bedroom door crash open when she was only three storeys down, and she swore under her breath. Lan Fan pressed herself close against the wall, and hoped against hope that Armstrong, whoever he was, didn't have the brains to look down. She waited until she heard a soft curse and the slam of a French door before she scrambled down the remaining few storeys, dropping the last ten feet. Her ankles screamed as she hit the ground. She ducked through the hole in the chainlink—she was only just small enough to make it—and pulled her hood up over her head, charging at a fast walk towards Main Street, towards people, towards freedom.

_Pater_, she thought, and she hissed between her teeth.

Lan Fan walked faster.

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Welcome to **The Cavern**!

Username:  
>Password:<p>

_Dum inter homines sumus, colamus humanitatem._

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_Would you like to make a new account?_

Yes/No

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**Yes**

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Please enter a username, password, and the key phrase you have been issued.

_Serva me, servabo te._

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Username: **renegade_zeta**  
>Password: <strong>screw223everything#4<strong>

Key phrase: transit umbra lux permanet

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Processing…

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Key phrase accepted!

Welcome, **renegade_zeta!**

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The dude next to her smelled like bad cologne and too much coffee, and he was pretty clearly watching porn. She only hoped he didn't start jerking himself off. Lan Fan drummed her fingers in a nervous rhythm as she waited for the chatroom name list to crop up on the right hand side of the screen, and hoped that no one was looking at her terminal. Nobody ever did, in a cybercafé, but she'd been cracking for too long not to have an unhealthy level of paranoia, and considering the CIC had been at her front door today, her paranoia was goddamn justified.

It had taken her three hours to walk to the only cybercafé in Centralis that she had any modicum of trust for, Fotset's Comps, and the only shoes she'd been able to get a hold of in her wild flight were a size too small. Her toes were pinched, her bloody hand had a gash in it the length of her middle finger, and in her rush she'd grabbed her crappy backpack, not her nice one. She'd have to be careful her laptop didn't just fall out onto the sidewalk. Lan Fan made a mental note to buy duct tape and then realized that a drug store would mean surveillance cameras would mean CIC. Maybe she could go into a hardware store. Or a mall. Or something.

She thought she was going to puke.

No one was online in The Cavern. Even MetKid, who could almost always be relied upon to be online every moment of the day, was marked as offline. She licked her lips, and then opened a private message to Marsh, IronChild, and MetKid.

**renegade_zeta (16:32:12):** it's om3ga. pater hit me. centralis information coalition came to apartment. probably all over news. officer's name alex louis armstrong. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO CONTACT ON THIS HANDLE. public terminal, one-off. need safe place. please respond asap.

She chewed her cuticle, and then added a phone number—she'd bought a disposable cell phone a week ago, the only thing she could afford phone-wise, a really bad one that was charging at her feet—and hit send. She logged out and left Fotset without looking back.

Were they following her? She wasn't sure. She kept her hood up—thankfully, the asura hoodie was light enough that people weren't giving her _too _many looks for wearing a sweater in July—but sooner or later someone would catch her face on a monitor. CIC surveillance was legend. She was honestly surprised she'd managed to fly under the radar for three whole hours already. Unless she wasn't, and they were following her. Lan Fan turned at the nearest corner, mounting the steps up into a train station. She had a metro pass, but she left it in her wallet; she purchased a ticket to some random station in East District, and boarded, passing through three compartments until she finally found a seat near a group of teenage boys. If she kept her hair up and her jacket zipped, she could pass as one of them. One of them, with a trio of studs in his right ear, gave her jacket an appraising look before turning back to chat with his friends. Lan Fan stuck her earbuds in her ears—no music, just a block against the world—before she pulled her laptop free of her backpack.

She'd been very careful not to do any of her cracking on her laptop. The computer she'd had to abandon in her apartment had been her baby; she'd been moding it since she bought it, and it had been top of the line then, a sleek Automail with password protection on every file. Some of them had been location locked. If they took her computer out of her apartment, it was set to automatically delete her most sensitive files. At least they wouldn't be able to find all her psychiatric information from her, but if they dug deep enough into her past, they'd probably find Dr. Chen and all her prescripts in no time.

In comparison, her laptop was dinky and useless, three years old and barely working, but at least she could program on it. She bit her thumbnail and kept her laptop on airplane mode, opening up one of her new firewall drafts and reading through the code. Without her old computer, she couldn't possibly find the hole that Pater had ripped apart, but coding soothed her. More importantly, she was pretty sure that going through her firewalls would be the only thing that could keep her from throwing up all over her shoes.

Pater had broken through her firewalls and into her main computer, and the next day the CIC was knocking on her door? It couldn't have been a coincidence. Had the same thing happened to snipersight? Is that why she hadn't been in The Cavern in days? What about WhiskerTeeth01, had he been taken by the CIC? Her stomach churned. She'd heard stories from people who were imprisoned by the CIC; kept in cells that were too small to even stretch in; interrogated for hours; denied food, water, sleep, light. Ever since the Army had taken control of Amestria, Centralis had turned into a chaos of rifles and mass arrests. Her hands were shaking as she adjusted a line of code. People weren't even outright arrested anymore; they just disappeared, and most times they never came back.

She couldn't go to any of the other Cavern Children; if they caught her, then she'd get IronChild, MetKid, or Marsh in trouble. She could only hope that The Cavern firewalls were still good enough for Pater or the CIC not to have hacked her message yet. Her best bet was to get out of the country somehow, where the CIC couldn't get its hands on her anymore. But where could she go? The borders were too tight for her to make a run for it, even if she tried to wade through snow, and she didn't have the money to pay for a forged passport. She didn't have any friends or relatives she could crash with, and even if she did, she wouldn't have risked it. She chewed on her cuticle until it began to bleed, and then wiped the blood on her torn jeans. Next to her, one of the teenagers laughed loudly, and when he whipped his head back hair stung at her face. Lan Fan flinched and refused to meet his eyes. Even if she _had _been able to pay for a passport, she wouldn't have dared do it. All the contacts she had were digital; none of them would dare stick their necks out that far for her. If she was lucky, she had enough money from all of her freelance work to live in hiding for a while, especially if she withdrew it all from her accounts and broke up her cards; that is, if they hadn't already frozen her accounts. Didn't they have the right to do that, if she was a fugitive?

Her phone buzzed. Lan Fan jumped again, and the teenager sitting next to her scooted as far away as he could without ramming into the old lady on his other side. "Tweaker," he hissed under his breath, and Lan Fan flipped him off before digging her disposable cell phone out of her pocket. It was a blocked number.

_Forsan miseros meliora sequentur. Kanama Station, East Gate. Get rid of your phone, it can be tracked. Meet you under the Marcoh ad._

Kanama Station was on a different line. Lan Fan left at the next stop, took the phone apart, and tossed it in three pieces into three different trash cans before paying for another ticket in cash and heading east. She took the SIM card with her and broke it into three pieces under her combat boot before flushing them down the toilet.

She'd never been this far down the East Line before, and Kanama had never been on her list of places to visit. Centralis would never admit to having slums, but she couldn't think of anything else to call this place. Even the train station had tarps set up for the homeless. The sign for Dr. Marcoh's Emergency Clinic (_No Insurance? No Charge!_) was just beyond the turnstile, and she waited across from it, her back against the wall and her hood lowered, fiddling with her music player and pretending to look normal. Even with her torn, ratty backpack and dirty jeans, she stood out here in that she actually had semi-clean clothing, no matter that she'd bought it all for less than five dollars from a charity store. Most of them were Ishvali, and she thought they were watching her. Until her grandfather had died, she'd never seen an Ishvali person before. Their red eyes still unsettled her, even if she no longer believed the government propaganda about them. It had been an Ishvali who'd helped her run from foster care, after all.

It was nearly six pm now. Her sleeping meds had kept her out until nearly noon, and then she'd been running and on trains for hours after that. She finally just kicked her shoes off, giving them to the next slum-person walking by—he took them with a glare and scuttled faster to get away from her. She stood in dirty, torn socks on dirty, torn linoleum, and bounced on the balls of her feet. No one was standing under the Marcoh sign.

She'd been there for ten minutes and was ready to bolt when someone finally came to a stop under the word _Insurance. _Male. Young. Maybe younger than her by a year or two. Ponytail under a black bandana. His clothes were torn and dirty; his skin was clean underneath. A disguise, maybe. He was wearing heavy boots and didn't seem to be carrying anything. He glanced around, tugged at the knot on his bandana, and then turned to set his back against the sign, crossing his arms over his chest. He was wearing tattered fingerless gloves, and there was a long scar along the back of his right arm, like a cut from a knife. Lan Fan watched him for a minute or two. He didn't _look _like a Kanama slum-boy, but from some of the waves and nods he was getting, he definitely knew people down here. Was this really who she was supposed to meet?

She licked her lips. Then she padded across the passage, leaning next to him, about three feet away. He didn't look at her. If he wasn't someone from The Cavern, then he'd assume she was getting out of the setting sunlight. If he was, then he'd try something. After a long breath, he said, in a low voice, "_Ubi concordia, ibi victoria_."

Her heart clenched. "_Timendi causa est nescire_," she said. Her public school Xerxian had been many, many years ago, and she could barely remember how to pronounce it. This person, whoever he was, had lovely Xerxian, all plummy and academic, like he was going to university. She hated him a little for it. He cocked his head at her and grinned, his smile crooked. His teeth were straight and clean. There was no way he was part of the slums.

"Hey, Omega," he said, and clapped her on the shoulder like they were old, old friends. "Let's get you out of here, shall we?"

* * *

><p>The boy was Marsh. He was nineteen. Lan Fan, all of twenty-three, felt very old when he told her. She'd been expecting one of the others, IronChild maybe, or MetKid, but Marsh—"Ling," he told her, when they'd forged out into the Kanama Slums and turned towards the west again—had been in the midst of dismantling The Cavern on IronChild's orders when she'd dropped her notice. He'd been the only one who'd been free to collect her. "Plus, I'm the only one that has enough room," he added, as Lan Fan pulled her hood further over her eyes and tried to keep up with him. Her feet were blistered from her now-gone shoes, and Marsh—Ling—walked as if he was plunging into battle. "My parents have been abroad for months, and our apartment's big enough for twenty. I can smuggle you in easy. And even the CIC will have trouble getting into the Imperial Wing."<p>

Her hand was throbbing under her gloves. Blood was crusting on her wrist. She needed to peel the glove away and wash the rust out of her cut, but she wasn't about to do that until she knew she'd be safe. She hid it inside her jacket pocket, and hoisted her backpack higher up on her shoulder. "No," she said, and Marsh blinked at her. "I'm not getting you in trouble. Not with the CIC."

"You need somewhere to stay," he said, too reasonably. "I have room, and they don't know who I am. You disconnected from The Cavern before Pater could get in, and with your cycling IP they couldn't track your exact location. The info we collected from Bradley's all over the net now, by the way. I didn't get as much as you did, but there's enough for them to be scrambling."

She wasn't sure how this was supposed to be reassuring. "You're a kid," she snapped, her voice very hoarse. She couldn't remember speaking aloud in days before Pater had hacked her system last night. "You're nineteen. I'm not getting you stuck in this. If they get me, fine, they caught me clear, but you're—you're a _kid_. I'm not doing that to you."

He stopped in the middle of the street. The crosswalk light flickered to red. Lan Fan seized him by the wrist and yanked him back onto the sidewalk before a passing car could turn him into paste. It was only once the crosswalk had blinked white again that he spoke. "I'm not a kid, Omega," he said, as people jostled around them. "I know what I'm doing. I've known what I was doing for years." His eyes ghosted down to her feet, and then back up to her face. "You're my friend, anyway. And friends don't let friends go on the run barefoot."

She gaped. He tapped the bottom of her chin, smooth as anything, and she snapped her mouth closed again with a click of teeth. Then he grabbed her hand, lacing their fingers together, and pulled her onto the crosswalk. "They're looking for one person," he said, when she went to pull away. "A woman on her own, single. Not a couple. Don't look behind you." He glanced at her with a quirk to his lips. "This isn't my first rodeo, Omega. Gimme some credit, will you?"

Lan Fan went to bite her thumbnail, and found her good hand trapped. She bit her tongue instead.

They walked for forty minutes to the next train station. Marsh revealed a metro pass for her that had a name that didn't belong to her—_Mei Chang_—but when she quizzed him about it, he only said that the actual owner wouldn't mind. She bought a new pair of shoes at the in-station mall, and then boarded the North Line to Dublith, where they caught a cab. Lan Fan kept her face turned towards the window. Dublith was one of the richer districts in Centralis, hours away from where she'd lived, in South Horace, or from Kanama in the east. Maybe it would through the CIC off her tracks a little.

She could only hope.

Lan Fan glanced at Marsh out of the corner of her eye, and then slowly took off her left glove. The scab lifted away in one great blaze of pain, and she hissed as it began to bleed again. Rust was smeared over her wrist and across her palm. She couldn't remember if she'd ever had a tetanus shot. Ling glanced over at her hand, and his eyebrows lifted, but he said nothing. As the taxi made a hairpin turn at a four-way stop, he pulled his kerchief off and handed it to her without a word. Lan Fan studied him, but he just turned his face back to the window.

She wrapped her hand in silence, and stuck her glove into her back pocket.

She'd never been in this part of town before. Marsh paid the taxi driver an exorbitant fee that he didn't even blink at, ignoring the sniff of condescension at the sight of his clothes and Lan Fan's hair, and then bundled her out of the car. They stuck out like smudges on white marble, Lan Fan in her tatty clothes, Ling in his workman's disguise. He tucked her arm through his without flinching, cast a one-fingered salute at one of the nearest doormen, and marched them down an alley. Lan Fan struggled to keep up. It was only once he'd come around to the back of one of the larger buildings that Ling pressed his thumb to a fingerprint scanner on a door marked _Private _and it flashed green, sliding open to reveal an elevator. He hit a button marked _Penthouse_, and it flashed green again. _DNA,_ she thought, and her stomach churned. Marsh had mentioned once or twice that his parents were well off, but DNA scanners in private elevators? She felt all churny inside. If she didn't get to a toilet soon, she really _was _going to vomit.

Ling bounced on the balls of his feet, and then turned to look at her as the elevator doors slid open again. "Hey," he said, and when she looked up at him, he knocked her burned shoulder with his. She bit her tongue, but said nothing. "You never said your name."

Lan Fan bit her thumbnail. "Omega's fine."

"I told you my name," he said, his stupid grin widening. "Is it really all that secret?"

She bit down harder on her thumbnail, and when it cracked under her teeth, she scraped it off with another fingernail. Her cuticle was still bleeding a little. "It's my name," she said, a little harsher than she'd meant to. "I picked it. It's mine."

He hummed under his breath, and nodded. "Okay," he said. "Omega." He clasped her elbow and drew her forward into a dark entryway. Judging by the way her soles were slipping against the floor, it was either made of polished wood or very glossy stone. Lan Fan tightened her hold on her backpack. "Kitchen's through there," Marsh said, gesturing randomly towards the east wall. "Take whatever. You're staying in one of the guest bedrooms. Make it as dirty as possible; it'll piss the Atomic Mom off, and that's my goal in life."

Lan Fan's throat tightened. "I thought you said she was away."

"Oh, she is. She'll probably be away for months. But this way I can say I had someone come over and wreck her furniture."

In spite of herself, her lips twitched. She bowed her head to hide it as Ling hit a lightswitch, revealing a gorgeous painting of some kind of landscape on the wall. It looked like a snowcapped mountain.

"There'll be clothes in the guest room by the time you're done showering." He gave her a considering look. "We're about the same size. You can borrow some of mine until you get your own. You have money?"

"Some." She cleared her throat. "I don't want to try and check my accounts. They've probably shut them all down by now."

He nodded, as though this was obvious. "We'll share for the time being. Maybe after a few days you can go out with Mei and get some new things, if wearing someone else's clothes bothers you. Mei's my sister," he added, and a whole new stone plunged into her gut at the thought of her using Marsh's sister's train card. _Now she's in danger too._ She pressed a fist tight into her stomach and pretended not to feel guilty. Marsh didn't notice. "There's a first aid kit under the bathroom sink," he added, hooking his thumbs into the pockets of his jeans. She realized, now that he'd given her his kerchief, that he had piercings in his ears. Studs and cuffs. The stone in his earlobe looked like a diamond. Her fingers twitched a little. "If you want help with your hand, tell me. I'll be down the hall."

Lan Fan nodded. Marsh didn't seem to have anything else to say. She had just turned on her heel to go find the shower when he cleared his throat, and said, "I'm glad you're all right, Omega."

She glanced over her shoulder at him, pulling her hood off her head. She couldn't quite think what to say in response. Finally, she just nodded.

By the time she'd found the bathroom, he'd vanished into his room, shutting the door quietly behind him.

* * *

><p><strong>AN:**

I have so many WIPs that I have no idea when I'll be able to update this, but since I REALLY LIKE IT, it'll probably be soonish. Plus the world just needs more LingFan.

Basically this whole AU came out of me reading Alif the Unseen, by G. Willow Wilson, and my obsession with the Glitch Mob, Daft Punk, Blue Stahli, Fox Stevenson, and Gemini. Thanks a lot, Ivali.

I'm not much of a computer tech, but I'm describing things as best as I can manage with the knowledge I have. If anything is glaringly, obviously wrong, please let me know and I can fix it.

Obviously, I've changed Amestris to Amestria, Central City to Centralis, and Ishvalan to Ishvali; these things are all mostly the same. Since it's a modern AU, technology has leaped forward. All of the 'net handles will be explained and identified as the story goes on. Feel free to guess who they are if you like. All the Latin/Xerxian phrases will be translated next chapter.


	2. beansprouts and bad binary

You Have Entered the **TrutherGate**

Name:  
>Passcode:<p>

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_Would you like to make a new account?_

Name: **d3lta_f0rce**  
>Passcode: <strong>thIs!is#stUpiD45<strong>

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**d3lta_f0rce**, welcome to **TrutherGate**!  
>Your last visit was [never].<p>

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Logged in as:**d3lta_f0rce**(Log out)

**Forum****  
><strong>

**Introductions****  
><strong>Tell us who the hell you are or get the hell out. **  
><strong>**Forum Rules****  
><strong>Just don't be a dick, okay?  
><strong>Cave Canem<strong>**  
><strong>Keep a watchful eye.  
><strong>Discussion<strong>  
>News, comments, thoughts, death threats.<p>

**Board Statistics****  
><strong>79 user(s) active in the past 15 minutes  
>No members are celebrating a birthday today<br>Our members have made a total of 117234 posts  
>We have 1045 registered members<br>The newest member is **d3lta_f0rce**  
>Most users ever online was 933 on <strong>June 23, 03:43 [AKA the Date Which Will Live Into Infamy (DWWLII)]<strong>

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**Introductions**

Post a new topic in **Introductions**

Topic Title: **d3lta_f0rce**  
>Topic Description: <strong>none of your goddamn business<strong>

Enter your post:  
><em>[empty_set]<em>  
><em>eat me, snotrags.<em>

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**Cave Canem**

Post a new topic in **Cave Canem**

Topic Title: **Pater Familias****  
><strong>Topic Description: **stalactite avalanche**

Enter your post:  
><em>the cavern is down. om3ga &amp; snipersight had firewalls breached by pater; poss. whiskerteeth01 as well. om3ga tracked by cic wi 24 hours. prob. link between pater and cic, as if we didn't already know. KEEP AWAY FROM PATER. fwd all news on snipersight, whiskerteeth01, and other handles dismantled by pater to this address. also fwd all known info on pater, cic, alex louis armstrong, etc._

**Posted on Wednesday, July 17, 04:32:33.**

**Comments:**

_Thread deleted_

**Response to ****Topic: Pater Familias****  
><strong>**Posted on Wednesday, July 17, 04:42:12****  
><strong>**Subject: **om3ga  
><strong>MetKid: <strong>like we're going to tell someone we don't know about crap like this

_**Response to **_**MetKid****  
><strong>**Posted on Wednesday, July 17, 04:43:27.****  
><strong>**Subject: **(no subject)  
><strong>d3lta_f0rce:<strong> forest fortuna adiuvat, e. thanks for sending the marshmallow my way.

_**Response to **_**d3lta_f0rce****  
><strong>**Posted on Wednesday, July 17, 04:46:19.****  
><strong>**Subject: **(no subject)  
><strong>MetKid: <strong>damn  
>didnt think youd be back so soon<br>where the hell did you go  
>you somewhere safe? if youre not ill kick his ass for you<p>

_**Response to **_**MetKid****  
><strong>**Posted on Wednesday, July 17, 04:47:39.****  
><strong>**Subject: **(no subject)  
><strong>d3lta_f0rce:<strong> places. heard anything from anyone else?

_**Response to **_**d3lta_f0rce**  
><strong>Posted on Wednesday, July 17, 04:59:21<strong>  
><strong>Subject: <strong>not here  
><strong>MetKid: <strong>[link]

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Welcome to T4lker!

Username:  
>Password:<p>

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Would you like to make a username?

Username: **d3lta_f0rce****  
><strong>Password: **34%dlEE#z**

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Welcome to T4lker, **d3lta_f0rce!**

**MetKid **would like to add you as a Chattie.  
>You have <strong>two<strong>[2] new message(s) from **MetKid.**

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C:\miracleworker\lfz\programs\firewalls\stonewaller  
>C:\miracleworker\lfz\programs\firewalls\thebladerunner<br>C:\miracleworker\lfz\programs\firewalls\dragonslair  
>C:\miracleworker\lfz\programs\th\sneakattack<p>

Would you like to add "stonewaller" to your T4lker experience?  
>Would you like to add "thebladerunner" to your T4lker experience?<br>Would you like to add "dragonslair" to your T4lker experience?  
>Would you like to add "sneakattack" to your T4lker experience?<p>

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'stonewaller' has been installed!  
>'thebladerunner' has been installed!<br>'dragonslair' has been installed!  
>'sneakattack' has been installed!<p>

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You are now Chatties with **MetKid**!

You have joined **MetKid**'s chat!

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**MetKid (05:01:59): **damn lan fan  
><strong>MetKid<strong> **(05:02:06)**: weve all been going crazy where the hell have you been  
><strong>d3lta_f0rce (05:02:13): <strong>did you not see the message i left in the cavern?  
><strong>MetKid (05:02:19): <strong>marsh took it down**  
><strong>**MetKid (05:02:24): **he said cic came to find you?  
><strong>d3lta_f0rce (05:03:51): <strong>it was a disaster. i had to climb down six storeys of drainage pipe and i think i'm going to have a scar on that hand permanently. hiding somewhere safe for now, but i'll have to move soon. not risking the new roommate. dismantled all the old om3ga handles. i think i left some of my meds on my bedside table. (not the important ones, but still.) they'll have my name all over the news soon as a 'dissenter.' nothing yet though. hear anything from anyone else?  
><strong>MetKid (05:04:12): <strong>not since the hit on bi  
><strong>MetKid (05:04:18): <strong>ironchilds safe tho  
><strong>MetKid (05:04:21): <strong>thought you were staying with marsh  
><strong>d3lta_f0rce (05:04:52): <strong>he told you?  
><strong>MetKid (05:05:02): <strong>yeah it was my idea  
><strong>MetKid (05:05:09): <strong>even if its temporary its a good place to hide  
><strong>MetKid (05:05:11):<strong> marsh is cool  
><strong>MetKid (05:05:14): <strong>want me to drop some files in the ftp for you  
><strong>MetKid (05:05:17): <strong>looks like youre prepping for war so  
><strong>d3lta_f0rce (05:05:26): <strong>it's not like i have anything else to do while i'm trapped here.  
><strong>d3lta_f0rce (05:05:31): <strong>find anything on the cic agent that knocked my door down?  
><strong>MetKid (05:05:33): <strong>not yet  
><strong>d3lta_f0rce (05:05:36): <strong>what about the bradley hack? anything useful?  
><strong>MetKid (05:05:39): <strong>if there was its on your machine  
><strong>MetKid (05:05:47): <strong>been through all the docs on my end and nothing popped out at me**  
><strong>**MetKid (05:05:51): **have to go  
><strong>MetKid (05:05:53):<strong> be safe

**MetKid** _has left the chat!_

**d3lta_f0rce (05:06:31): **don't do anything stupid, ed.

**d3lta_f0rce **_has left the chat!_

Lan Fan flexed the wrist of her bad arm and then shut her computer down. At least Ed was all right. IronChild too. None of them had been tainted by Pater smashing through her firewalls. Her shoulders crept further down, away from her ears; they'd been hitched up there since she'd found Fotset's Comps, and even a long shower in Marsh's luxurious bathroom hadn't managed to bring them down again. Her hand was slathered in antibiotic and wrapped up in gauze, but she'd taken too many meds over the course of the past few years for ibuprofen or aspirin to work all that well; it throbbed in time with her heartbeat. It probably needed stitching, but it wasn't like she could just waltz into a hospital for it. _Maybe we should have stopped at Dr. Marcoh's on the way back from Kanama._If No Insurance? No Charge! was really the man's motto, then her hand would have been no problem.

She rubbed the bandage absently, ignoring the ache deep in her muscles, and then rolled off the mattress.

The guest bedroom she'd chosen was the only one that opened up into the fire escape. Lan Fan kept the curtains closed; from what Marsh had told her, the penthouse had been empty aside from him for months now, and she didn't want to attract attention to herself or to Marsh by revealing that there was a new resident. The curtains were specially designed to block all light, from inside or out, so she could leave the lamps burning without worrying about a midnight observer. She kept them off anyway. She'd nearly dropped her backpack when she'd locked herself the night before; the guest room she was using was about the size of half her apartment; the bed (a king-sized mattress, the sheets 350-count) was plush and dangerous, and the attached bathroom was the most sinfully gorgeous thing she'd ever had a chance to use in her life. She'd stood under the hot water for a good hour, watching dirt and blood from her hand swirl away down the drain, and wondered if she'd made a mistake by asking The Cavern Children for help.

If she was going to be totally honest with herself, The Cavern Children would have been in trouble even if she hadn't begged for assistance. If Pater could break her firewalls, then it—whatever it was—would have found the other members of The Cavern eventually. Hell, if she hadn't sent out an alert, they might have been caught by surprise by the CIC. Now at least MetKid and the others had a better idea of how they could keep themselves safe. With The Cavern dismantled, they'd all be much harder to find, especially considering IronChild had spent most of the past year working on a program that shielded all Cavern Children activity behind the Great Firewall. With _transmogrifier_ running, Pater would have a hell of a time trying to track anyone else down, even if it _was_a miracle program. The organization would be able to keep going, even if she'd been forced to a standstill.

It wasn't much of a consolation.

Her computer beeped as Ed dropped all his files into the FTP drive they shared. Financial documents, mostly. Some weapons designs that she really wasn't sure she wanted to examine too closely. She set MiracleWorker to scan for key phrases—_government, Amestria, public, populace, civilian, destruction—_and then put her laptop on the floor so the glow from the screen layered the whole room with a pale blue light.

She'd need to go pick up one of her terabyte drives, she thought, chewing on her pinky nail. She frequently backed up all the files she'd had on her mainframe—the one she'd called powerhouse—onto all the little WMDs she had stashed around the city. The closest one to Dublith District was probably _kunai_, in a train station storage unit. She kept all the keys to all her units in the inside pocket of her asura jacket. Plus, she'd paid for them all in cash, and registered the boxes under a phony surname. There was no way that Alex Louis Armstrong, CIC would have found them by now. She had time enough to rescue those, at least. She'd be lying if she said she hadn't considered the possibility of needing to go on the run before now. She just…hadn't thought it would be quite so soon.

"Damn." She ran a hand through her hair, and then glanced at her reflection in the mirror. She hadn't been eating much lately. It showed in how her clothes were hanging off her shoulders, like a mannequin too skinny to be real. There were deep plum circles under her eyes, and her mouth was sallow. She'd never been one for makeup. Her hair hung in awkward chunks around her face, ragged and split at the ends. Maybe she should just cut it off. Lan Fan fumbled for her Quashers and popped one, swallowing it dry. Then she flopped back onto the bed and opened up MiracleWorker again. She'd told Ed the truth; as long as she was trapped in hiding, she might as well make the most of it.

The CIC had finally released her name and driver's license photo to the press. Lan Fan grimaced at the photograph—it had been one of the months that she'd run out of Quashers, and the black monster had left her reeling—and then let the relief come. In a way, it was easier to know for sure that they were looking for her. Now, at least, she had a definite enemy.

She stared at the photograph for a moment—if her grandfather had been alive, he would have had a heart attack at the sight of her—and then minimized the image. It was better that no one was left to remember her. Lan Fan sent three digital tips into the CIC, claiming to have spotted Lan Fan Zhang in three completely different areas of the city, before she scrolled down to the rest of the article. _Wanted in connection with criminal conspiracy and cyberwarfare. Considered dangerous. Do not approach._Well, that was reassuring. Maybe it meant they were scared that she had to take drugs to keep her brain functioning right. When she did a general internet search for her name, it just turned up more warnings._Psychologically disturbed. Crimes against the state. Do not approach. Do not approach. Do not approach._

She bit down hard on the inside of her lip, and swore under her breath before logging into PrivateEye and typing in the name "alex louis armstrong."

Technically, PrivateEye was a program that only private investigators and their assistants could get into. Technically, Lan Fan didn't actually give a crap. She had a log-in ID from before her grandfather had had to start driving taxis, and even if she'd had to steal the money to pay it, she'd kept up with the monthly fee for continued use. It had proven its worth a thousand times over when she'd first started dropping infobombs, back when she'd been stuck in foster care and locking herself in attic rooms to keep nosy fake parents from deleting all her programming projects. She hadn't had to use it since she'd joined The Cavern, but typing in the webaddress felt almost like coming home. She could smell her grandfather's cigar smoke hanging over her shoulder as she waited for the website to buffer. For the first time since she'd fled out her back window, she felt safe on the net again. There were a thousand Zhangs in Centralis; there was no way that CIC was watching the PrivateEye account yet.

_Alex Louis Armstrong. Born April 18. 34._She scrolled. Registered gun license, registered investigator's license. His driver's license was about to expire; he'd need to replace it soon. No write-ups, no run-ins with the law, not even a damn speeding ticket. He'd been scouted by the CIC before he'd even turned eighteen. The rest of his record was sealed. _Figures_. CIC officers were notoriously private. No policing of the police.

_Father: Armstrong, Philip Gargantos. Mother: Talos, Katrina. _Four siblings, all sisters. Only the eldest, Olivier, had a real file of her own; the rest were either working abroad or debutantes. Olivier Armstrong, though, she was a CIC Captain. A quick general search revealed she'd been decorated. _Silver Star for Patriotism._ The father had been CIC too. _A freaking secret police baby._ Probably raised from infanthood to believe in the glory of the state and of the Council. Never had cause to question the Great Firewall in his life. She drummed the fingernails of her good hand against the MiracleWorker, and then closed out of PrivateEye. If she could hack the CIC database, she'd know what Armstrong knew, but a move like that this early would be cocky beyond all reason. Even with her IP cycler and her location-bouncing programs, she wasn't about to try and get past Pater again. Not until she had some clearer idea of what she was up against.

It didn't make any sense. (Well, it did—it made a damn lot of sense, for the CIC to be coming after The Cavern, but not in this exact fashion.) What had drawn Pater to her? She'd had all her firewalls up, all her deflecting shields. It shouldn't have been able to detect her. Outside of The Cavern, the handle om3ga had never had all that much of a presence in the Centralis websphere; even if someone had reported her, she would have been small pickings compared to MetKid or meatgrinder. Hell, even Marsh had more of a record than her. (He'd said he'd started when he was eleven, she realized; she would have been fifteen. A year before she'd met IronChild. The year her grandfather had died.) If Pater had been after her solely for her connection to The Cavern, it would have gone right for her intranet connection, trying to hack into the private server she and the others shared. Instead it had gone directly for her files. For her databanks.

_If there is, it's on your machine_, Ed had said.

Maybe she'd hit some tripwire in the Bradley Industry documents. Maybe _that _had drawn Pater to her. She pulled her braid over her shoulder and started picking at her split ends. It wasn't completely out of the realm of possibility. It wasn't _probable_, sure, but the whole world knew how deeply Bradley Industries was connected to the government. If Pater was a government drone, like MetKid suspected, then maybe she'd triggered it by downloading everything off of the BI mainframe. Maybe she'd downloaded something the Bradleys hadn't wanted anyone to see.

"If you did," she said to herself, "then there's no way you're getting at it now." Powerhouse would have deleted most of her documents the instant someone tried to crack into her system. Even if she hacked her own system again—it would be much easier, considering Pater had left all her defenses in tatters—whatever Bradley Industries had would be far out of her meager reach.

She slammed her laptop shut and padded out of the guest room.

The TV was blaring somewhere. Lan Fan pulled her asura jacket closed over her chest—she'd taken off her bra a few hours ago, and the undershirt she was wearing was thin and riddled with little holes—and padded as quietly as she could towards the eastern end of the apartment. Marsh was nowhere to be seen. The whole place smelled of lemon cleanser and dust; like no one had lived here in years. Elegant, sleek, and cold, like a sarcophagus with no one inside. Her legs prickled with goosebumps. Marsh had loaned her jeans, shorts, a few t-shirts and undershirts, and a single pair of worn plaid pajama pants that were disgustingly comfortable. The clothes she had on probably would have cost about the same as her monthly rent.

There were no photographs on the walls, she realized. Paintings, sure. A few statues in scattered corners. But no photographs.

She passed by a den (that was where the TV was, and she could see Marsh's feet sticking out off the end of the sofa—she kept as quiet as she could), a full-fledged dining room, what looked like a mini-gym, and another guest bedroom before she finally stumbled into a standing bar and realized she must be in the kitchen. Lan Fan glanced over her shoulder—the den was around the corner of the hallway, at the wrong angle for Marsh to be able to see her—and then flicked on the light, ignoring the shining knife-block and glistening marble counters in favor of the fridge. There wasn't much inside—some questionable takeout, milk that had gone off, and for some reason a whole hive of bell peppers—but there were good eggs, and after going through a few drawers she found a frying pan that cost more than her computer. She only hesitated for a second before cracking the eggs and collecting the bell peppers for chopping. Marsh had said she could use the kitchen, hadn't she? And it was five in the morning. It was unlikely he'd even notice she'd done it if she did her dishes.

She was halfway through layering her omelet with red bell pepper, onion powder, and pre-chopped garlic when she heard the scuff of a footstep. Marsh was leaning against the door frame, still in jeans and a baggy t-shirt, knuckling his eyes like a child. The studs were gone from his ears, but the cuffs were still in place. "Hey," he said, and his jaw cracked in a tremendous yawn. Lan Fan made herself loosen her death-grip on the handle of the frying pan. "What time is it?"

She shrugged. Marsh's eyes flickered up over her head—there was an atomic clock on the wall that read 05:47—and then he went to the standing bar and perched on one of the three-legged stools. His hair was down, she realized suddenly. He looked older that way. Less cocky. She fiddled with the sleeve of her hoodie and prodded at her omelet, unable to think of anything to say. It was so much easier to talk to people when you had a WiFi connection between you. She was pretty sure that even normal people would have trouble saying anything now, though. After all, what were you supposed to say to someone who had put their neck out for you on the governmental chopping block?

"Can't sleep?" he said finally.

Lan Fan went to chew her thumbnail, and then stopped herself. She shrugged again instead. If she was brave enough, she'd have taken a sleeping pill hours ago, but her brain was racing too fast. Her silence didn't seem to bother him overly much. Marsh hummed, and tapped his foot against the standing bar. Lan Fan flipped her omelet. Then she licked her lips, and said, "Adrenalin."

Marsh nodded. She prodded at her omelet again. Maybe, if she stared hard enough, it would cook faster. Lan Fan cleared her throat. "Thank you. For…for doing this. I didn't say it before."

Marsh leaned back so that he was balanced on two legs of his stool. Then he thunked back to the floor. "No big. Would you believe me if I told you that you're not the first Cavern Child I've had here? Granted, Ed was never on the run from the CIC, but he managed to piss off a lot of people. Laid low here for six months or so."

She blinked. She'd never heard that story from MetKid. Of course, both MetKid and IronChild were notorious for not telling anyone anything about themselves. It was a miracle of coincidence and boredom-inspired cracking that she even knew Ed's name. With Marsh, she'd just never asked. She wondered now if she ought to have.

_God, _she thought, studying the shadows under Marsh's cheekbones, _please don't let me be stuck here for six months._

"Not gonna ask what he did?" Marsh asked, and Lan Fan lifted her good shoulder in half a shrug. Her omelet was almost done.

"If I do, I'll ask him."

Marsh pursed his lips. "I think you're the only cracker I know that appreciates personal privacy."

"Lies bother me," she said. "Bullies bother me. Privacy doesn't bother me. Privacy is a right."

"A right the firewall takes from us," he said, and Lan Fan nodded once, slowly. Marsh laughed. "If I was a politician I'd make that my campaign slogan. And then I'd get shot in the head."

_It wouldn't be that obvious_, Lan Fan thought. But there were days when she'd judge the Council capable of doing anything to anyone, and considering her face was currently plastered all over the news for hacking a military weapons company, she wasn't overly inclined to be charitable towards the Amestrian government at the moment. Marsh sighed, and laid his head against the counter.

"They've been showing your photograph every half an hour since the seven o'clock news report," he told her. "They really want you caught."

She scoffed, and turned off the stove. "They're doing a bad job of it." After all, any hacker worth his salt would have been able to trail her to The Cavern by now, and probably find Marsh, too. The CIC might have a kickass watchdog, but their follow-through was crap.

Or maybe Armstrong's follow-through was crap. At this point, she wasn't sure if she should be differentiating between the two.

"I said they _want _you caught, not that they'll manage it. Though they're damn good at their hunts, usually. Plates are above the microwave," he added, before Lan Fan could ask. As she padded over to the cabinet, he said, "I've been trying to think why they're so pushy about it. They didn't do this for snipersight; that is, if they did, I didn't notice it. And I notice everything."

"Maybe snipersight was caught," she said, but her guts twisted at the thought. "I mean, I had to climb down a drain pipe. Maybe snipersight just didn't have enough time to get away."

"If they'd caught snipersight, it would have been announced. Plastered all over the major news networks. She was working on a CIC hack. You know that."

Lan Fan blinked. "She was doing what?"

Marsh's eyes went large. He lifted his head. "She never told you? sniper was building a worm that would have spilled all of CIC's secrets from the inside out. She asked for my help a couple times. I would have thought she'd ask to borrow can_of_worms, she said herself it would have been really helpful."

She gave into the temptation. Lan Fan nibbled her pinky nail again. snipersight had never mentioned any of that to her. Sure, she'd asked to borrow can_of_worms, but Lan Fan had just assumed that sniper had been going after something on her own. After all, everyone in The Cavern had their own agendas to follow. If snipersight had been going after the CIC…something under her sternum twisted like a dying snake. "No one's ever cracked the CIC database."

"No one's ever tried from inside before. She was government staff, remember? She had access. heatcol thinks that's why they hit her with Pater; she was getting too close to an answer. Whatever it was."

Lan Fan bit her tongue. Marsh was watching her omelet with greedy eyes. In spite of herself, she chopped it in half with the spatula and then collected another plate from the cabinet, sliding it towards him. He grinned like a kid and then speared a piece with a fork he produced from nowhere. Maybe he kept one in his jeans pocket.

"Was she looking for something in particular?" Lan Fan asked, cutting her omelet into methodical pieces with a spoon. Marsh shrugged.

"If she was, she didn't tell me. She might have mentioned it to someone else, though. Who knows? sniper kept things to herself." He shoveled a piece of omelet into his mouth that defied all laws of physics, size-wise, and swallowed without chewing. "You're different, though. It's not like you're attacking CIC. Even if they found your name in sniper's files, you've never hit government systems. Well, never _noticeably,_" he added, when Lan Fan narrowed her eyes at the insinuation. "And it couldn't have been Bradley Industries. If it had been, me and IronChild would be down too, not to mention Ed. There had to have been a reason."

She squished one of the bell pepper chunks under her spoon. Quashers always made her nauseous. "Did you make a full download of the BI frame?"

Marsh shook his head. He took another, larger, bite of omelet. "No. I don't think any of us did."

She held her tongue.

"It doesn't make sense," he continued. "Why hasn't it come after the rest of us? We all worked jointly on the hack. Maybe it found something in snipersight's files that had to do with me." She shrugged. Something very close to hatred curdled in her belly. "Maybe someone on TrutherGate or Blogr decided to report me, and it was just a really bad coincidence. It could have been any number of things. The only way to tell would be to hack the CIC mainframe and see who reported me in the first place, but that's a sandtrap. Nobody's been able to get into the CIC intranet and get out without being observed. It's why we needed snipersight; she was already placed inside, she could handle it."

"Until she couldn't."

Lan Fan nodded. "Until she couldn't."

Marsh stared at her. He had such thin eyes, but they reflected a lot of light; more than they actually should have, judging by their size. Like flecks of mirror glass. She wondered if he could tell she was lying. Then he leaned back again, and finished the omelet. Lan Fan, who couldn't eat anymore, pushed her half across to him, and he inhaled that as well before sliding off his stool. "I'm going to back to bed," he said. "If you want to use the gym or something, go ahead. Just don't record over anything on the TV. And please don't get arrested before I wake up. I'd hate to miss the show."

She scowled. "You're a dick, Marsh."

Marsh grinned at her, and then snagged her plate before she realized what he was doing. Lan Fan swallowed hard, and watched out of the corner of her eye as he rinsed both plates, put them in the dishwasher, and then turned to look at her again, cocking an eyebrow. "Born that way. You love'll me anyway, though. Everyone does."

She made a noise somewhere between a grunt and a scoff, and then scowled again. His grin faded, slowly. Marsh paused on the other side of the standing bar. "If you want help, Omega, let me know. I have nothing but time, and I'd _really_like to take Pater down a notch."

Then he was gone. Lan Fan went to collect her computer, and started going through King Bradley's personal files. If Ed was right, maybe she had something after all.

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C:\miracleworker\lfz\downloads\BradleyIndustries\

Search: "government", "public", "civilian", "amestria", "populace", "destruction", "experimental"…

Search has 3295 results.

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Search: "sniper", "snipersight", "CIC"

Search has 4 results.

C:\BradleyIndustries\mainframe\financial\may14  
>C:\BradleyIndustries\mainframe\hr\jhavocbio<br>C:\BradleyIndustries\mainframe\designs\killshot23  
>C:\BradleyIndustries\mainframe\possibilities\snipersight<p>

_Please enter password for document access._

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C:\miracleworker\lfz\programs\cracker\skeletonkey

Would you like to run "skeletonkey" on "snipersight?"

Remaining runtime: 8 hrs, 15 min.

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"_YAO_!"

Lan Fan shot out of bed and groped for the blade she kept under her pillow. The sheets smelled strange. Her knife wasn't there. Her heart kicked into overdrive until she realized that she was in Marsh's bed in Marsh's guestroom in Marsh's penthouse palace, and then she hid her face in the pillow again. The laundry detergent he used—or his maid used, who knew—was way too heavy on the lemon essence. It was going to give her a migraine.

The screech came again, and Lan Fan wondered if she should start keeping one of the kitchen knives under the mattress. That, or possibly take up residence inside the gargantuan closet. "_Ling Yao, you get your ass out of bed right this instant!_" The voice was female, young, high; she didn't know it. Then again, she spent most of her time locked in her apartment eating takeout and occasionally getting paid for some not-so-benevolent hacking jobs. She didn't know many voices. Lan Fan eased out of bed. The fire escape would be harsh on her blistered feet, but at least it would mean she wouldn't get reported anytime soon.

A door opened. "Darling sister mine, your caterwauling is unappreciated." Marsh sounded surprisingly close; she wondered where his bedroom was. High heels clicked against the floor outside of the guest room. "What is it you want? I _was _going to sleep deliriously late today. I had it marked out on my schedule and everything."

There was a noise like a kettle boiling over. "It's four o'clock in the afternoon. Did you forget? Please tell me you didn't forget."

"I forget nothing I want to remember."

"For god's sake, Ling, shut up for a minute! Are you seriously trying to tell me that you were planning on skipping out on the dinner party? _The _dinner party? The one that you, specifically, were invited to? The one that is being thrown for you and your damn Ricochet program? _That _dinner party?"

"Ah," said Marsh. "I'm afraid I didn't want to remember that one."

Silence smothered the hallway. Lan Fan felt the hair lift on the back of her neck. Then the girl—Marsh's sister—sighed deep enough to power a small windmill. "Please tell me you haven't picked up that blonde hobo again."

"Ed's not a hobo." Pause. "Well, not anymore, anyway."

"You're kidding me with this, right? You know what Dad's gonna do if you skip out on this dinner? This is an _award ceremony_, Ling! This is big stuff, _important_stuff! You can't just keep on 'forgetting' the company, you're not sixteen anymore!"

"The only thing Dad will do if I miss this dinner party is glare at me from a thousand miles away. It doesn't actually sting, Mei. You'd be surprised how much his venom gets diluted from afar."

The sister—Mei—hissed a little. "He's going to disown you if you keep this up."

"And you're the perfect daughter with an early graduation from med school in the works. He still has you. I can afford to slum it." Marsh clicked his tongue against his teeth. "Hey, speaking of med school—you know how to stitch up cuts, right?"

Lan Fan felt as though she'd been plunged into a bucket of ice water.

"—course I do," said Mei. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"A friend of mine cut her hand open yesterday. She can't afford the hospital. Maybe you could do something?"

"A friend?" Mei asked shrewdly. "Or another hobo?"

"Please. This one has an apartment. She's just staying for a few days while her ex-boyfriend gets shipped off to who knows where." A door shut. "You'll have woken her up. I don't think it's possible for anyone on the planet to sleep through your yowling, Mei."

"If you woke up at a decent hour, I wouldn't have to _yowl_," said Mei in a gritty voice. "Don't be such a brat."

"Omega." There was a double-tap against the door. She could hear Mei muttering under her breath about hobos with stupid names. "You up?"

She licked her lips. Lan Fan pulled her hood off her head—she'd fallen asleep curled up into her asura hoodie, and there was still music pounding out of her earbuds, rap on repeat—and wished she'd thought to set an alarm. "I'm up," she said. Her voice cracked. "My hand's fine."

"You can't leave it like that. It'll get infected." Damn him for sounding so goddamn reasonable. "Come on, wormgirl. It'll heal better if it gets stitched, and besides, it's not like Mei's here on behalf of your ex." He hesitated. "Or for news crews, for that matter."

Lan Fan tucked her cut hand deeper into her jacket pocket. She'd tried to wash all the dried blood out of her parkour glove last night, and it was still soaking in the sink, the water stained brownish-pink. She hadn't looked at her palm since she'd slathered it in antiseptic and wrapped it. Lan Fan opened the door a crack. Marsh scratched the back of his neck, but his lips quirked up when she met his eyes. Over his shoulder—or actually under his shoulder, since she was so damn short—there was another woman peering at her, heavy jade in her ears and five-inch heels barely making a dent in her height. The woman pursed her lips in a distinctly Marsh-ish manner.

"Hello," she said, and then did something behind Marsh's back that made him yelp. "I'm Mei. Who are you, again?"

"Omega," said Marsh, and Mei pinched his ribs again.

"Not all of us live in your computer fantasy land." She looked back at Lan Fan. "Name, rank, serial number. Now."

Lan Fan bristled. "Omega," she repeated, and then closed her mouth and kept it shut. The message was clear. _The rest is none of your goddamn business._ Mei—Mei Chang, she realized, the girl whose metropass she'd used yesterday—rolled her eyes.

"God. Another one. You and your hobos," she said to Marsh. Marsh grinned at her, his eyes like mirrors again. "Ling said you hurt your hand? Why didn't you go to the hospital if it's bad enough for stitches? They'd have anesthetic." She eyed Lan Fan's hand. "And do a better job with the bandages."

"Omega's hiding from her ex-boyfriend," said Marsh easily, and Lan Fan slid her eyes up to his face. "He's part of CIC, real asshole. Smacked her around once or twice. If she goes to a hospital, it gets reported, and he probably has her name keyed to high-alert in his systems. I thought it'd be easier for you to do it."

It was a good lie, Lan Fan thought. It would explain why she was so hesitant to open the door to strangers. Mei Chang's eyes softened almost imperceptibly, and she nudged Marsh out of the way of the door, opening it further. Lan Fan let her do it, keeping her hands in her pockets. "Poor thing," said Mei, and reached out, rubbing Lan Fan's back. Lan Fan had to bite her tongue to keep from flinching. "CIC agents are trouble, sweetie. Didn't your mom tell you that?"

"Believe me," Lan Fan said. "I know now."

Mei shot Marsh a glance. "And you didn't get her new clothes? Boor. Yours are way too big for her, look. What did you do, kidnap her before she could pack a suitcase?"

"That's why Our Lord Hohenheim created the program called 'littlesister,'" said Marsh, and evaded Mei's nails. "I figured you'd be able to help her out with that. It'd be better if she doesn't leave for a week, at least, to give CIC-Asshole the slip for a while, but with your connections you could probably get a whole new wardrobe set to order without stirring foot out of the living room."

"Please," sniped Mei. "I could do it from my cell phone." She hadn't stopped rubbing Lan Fan's back. It was soothing, almost. Her fingernails were just long enough to feel dangerous, but the touch was gentle. "I can get her something later. _After _you go to the damn dinner party. Can I see your hand?"

She'd pried Lan Fan's hand out of her pocket before Lan Fan could fully process the request, and begun unwrapping it with steady hands. Her nails were painted bright pink, and the index finger had a butterfly inked in in black. Lan Fan looked up to find Marsh inching back from the still-open door, hands in pockets. He was shirtless, she realized. Mei really had woken him up. Without looking up from Lan Fan's hand (Lan Fan hissed; Mei was peeling gauze back faster than comfort allowed) Mei said, "Take one step towards your den and die, Ling Yao. And put some clothes on. I don't need to see your tattooed ass."

"You can't even see my ass," said Marsh, but he vanished down the hall anyway. Mei waited until there was a snap of a door closing before letting go of Lan Fan's hand, and shooing her back towards the bed, heading into the private guest bathroom. Lan Fan marveled at how balanced she was; she was wearing a miniskirt and heels high enough to kill a man, but she didn't hesitate about bending over to get the first-aid kit from under the sink.

"Sorry about him," she said, her voice echoing strangely against the empty walls. "My brother's brilliant, but he's the biggest dumbass I've ever met." She dug something else out from under the sink; it looked like a sewing kit. She swore under her breath. "I _knew _I should have left one of my kits here. We'll have to sterilize these." Mei glanced over her shoulder at Lan Fan, hoop earrings glimmering against her long dark hair. "Sorry for calling you a hobo."

Lan Fan shrugged, and wished she'd stowed her pills somewhere other than the bedside table. If Mei was a med student, she'd recognize Quasher right off. It was the cheapest drug that could be prescribed for bipolar II, and the only one that Lan Fan could afford on her crappy in-flux salary. She bit her tongue, and turned her back on her meds. Mei reappeared with a small ceramic bowl that stank of isopropyl alcohol, the first-aid kit tucked under her upper arm. She'd tied her hair back, and there was a small box of plastic gloves held between her teeth. She spat it out first, and it bounced against the mattress.

"Ling had this guy staying a few rooms down last year for like, six months." Mei pulled on the gloves, and stirred the needles in the bowl of alcohol. "Total homeless man. One of his internet friends, or that's what Ling said. The guy was a total brat. I think he just found him on the streets somewhere and took him in to make our father mad. He and Dad don't get along all that well." She opened the sewing kit. "What color do you want?"

"Doesn't matter."

Mei eyed Lan Fan's jacket, and then pulled the black thread out from the case and closed it again, kicking it under the bed with her stiletto heel. She folded her legs under her, and pulled Lan Fan's hand forward into her skirted lap. "_Ling!_ _Bring the brandy or something._"

"_We're out of brandy_!" She heard something clatter, and Marsh snarled swearwords under his breath. "_Why do you leave your crap everywhere_?"

"_So I can kill you and make it look like an accident_!" Mei shouted, and then she gave Lan Fan an apologetic look from under delicately plucked eyebrows. "See? Brat." She threaded one of the needles, and tied a knot in the end. "It should only be a few stitches, but since I don't have topical anesthesia it'll hurt. You want something to bite? Because I'd appreciate it if you don't scream too much."

Lan Fan wondered how Mei Chang could be simultaneously so polite and so brusque, and then rolled her burned shoulder. "I'll be okay. I'm not much of a screamer."

Mei eyed Lan Fan's shoulder. Her hoodie had slipped down, and some of her shiny burn scars stood out like brands against her skin. "I'll take your word for it, then," she said, and tugged on the thread she'd chosen. "You'll have to keep an eye on this. It won't dissolve the way hospital sutures would, and since it hasn't been sterilized, it might get infected anyway, no matter how much you clean it off. And it'll probably scar—" she gave Lan Fan's shoulder another lingering glance "—not that you're inexperienced there."

"It's fine," said Lan Fan. Marsh appeared in the doorway, wearing dark jeans and a T-shirt that had the words _11 cheers for binary! _scrawled across the front. He sat behind her without a word. His shoulder braced against her spine, and he was resting a dark bottle full of amber something-or-other against his knee. She wondered if it was a Yao family trait—Yao? Chang? Which one was it?—to completely disregard all evidence of personal space. "Can you just start, please?"

The cut was infected. Mei had to make a new, smaller slit in the scab, and when she squeezed, pus leaked out like tears. Then she wiped it clean with alcohol—Lan Fan nearly wrenched her hand away for that one, but Mei had more strength than she should have, and kept her frightfully still—and began her work. She'd thought it'd be painful. She hadn't thought it would _burn_. The tug of thread through flesh felt foreign, invasive, and the friction made the string heat up inside her skin. Lan Fan bit her tongue, and sweat popped out on her forehead, under her jaw. She'd hurt worse, but the thing about pain was that its memory faded. Fresh was always the worst. Mei made a second, perfect stitch, and said, "So, where do you come from?"

"Mei," said Marsh sharply, and he pressed closer to Lan Fan's back. She couldn't help it. She leaned into him a little. It was easier to think about how Marsh was invading her space than to watch the thread being pulled tight inside her skin. Besides, she had bad circulation, and he was _warm._"Not the time."

"Hey, if I have you both pinned, I'm going to take advantage of it." Another stitch. She could taste blood in her mouth. Her toes curled against the floor. The cut was still swollen, and under the stench of rubbing alcohol she could still smell the pus, rotting and somehow yellow. "You never talk about your friends, Ling. It's part of the reason why Dad gets so angry with you all the time."

She felt Marsh let out a short breath. It stirred the hair on the back of her neck. Lan Fan hid a shudder. "Dad's angry because I don't make nice with the brats that come around from Bradley and Raven. It doesn't mean I don't have friends."

Mei pulled the thread tight. She was using a curved needle that had probably been made for seamwork. It bit into her skin like a cat. "Your definition of 'friends' leaves something to be desired. No offense, Omega. I'm not talking about you. _You _seem all right. It's just that blonde midget that bothers me."

"Well, you bother Ed, too," said Marsh. "He wrote a whole program about it. Uses it on people he _really _doesn't like."

Lan Fan couldn't help it. She choked. "You mean _beansproutgirl?_"

Mei tugged on the thread, and Lan Fan made a soft noise that had Marsh stiff as a board behind her. "Watch it, Mei! You're using that thing like a freaking weapon."

"The hobo can jump off a bridge." Mei squeezed Lan Fan's wrist in an apology, and dabbed blood off of her palm with a bit of toilet paper. Then she looked up at Marsh, and frowned. "You're not wearing that."

"Not wearing what?" Marsh hooked his chin over Lan Fan's burned shoulder, smirking at his sister. She felt distinctly like a cat's scratching post. "Elucidate, oh sister mine."

"You are _not _wearing a crappy programming joke shirt to a formal business dinner." She made a fourth stitch, and then knotted it, snipping the end off with a pair of nail scissors. Lan Fan fought the urge to flex her fingers. Her hand was pounding in pain. "Stop hiding behind Omega. Go change your clothes."

"I'm not going to Dad's mass masturbation party. I'll wear whatever." He lifted his head from Lan Fan's shoulder, watching in interest as Mei wrapped the hand again, tighter this time, and with a much smoother weave. "You know that's all it is, Mei."

"Of course that's all it is. That doesn't mean you can skip it like you do everything else." Mei pinned the bandage, gave it one last examination, and then pronounced herself satisfied. She looked up at Lan Fan. "Sorry about dragging this out in front of you."

"It's fine," said Lan Fan. She wasn't quite sure why she should be offended. "I don't mind."

"At least this one's polite," said Mei, and then she collected the first-aid kit and the bowl and spent tissues and took them all back to the bathroom. Marsh untangled himself from Lan Fan, and then offered her the bottle. It looked like very expensive whiskey.

"Here," he said. "It'll help with the hellcat. And the pain. But mostly with the hellcat."

Lan Fan searched his face. Then she took the bottle in her right hand, propping it between her knees so she could unscrew it. The smell had the awful bite of good booze, and when she took a swallow—right from the bottle, because Marsh had neglected to bring a glass—it burned all the way down to her guts, where it promptly committed arson. It didn't do much to help with the way her hand was pounding, but it did taste good. She handed it back to Marsh, and he took a gulp himself, expertly. He'd probably been stealing his father's booze since he was old enough to hack. Mei wrinkled her nose at him when she came back into the guest bedroom, but made no comment.

"Go change your shirt, Ling. We're leaving in twenty minutes."

"I'm not leaving Omega alone," said Marsh stoutly. Something flickered on Mei's face. It might have been surprise; it might have been confusion. Lan Fan stared very hard at her lap.

"Ling," she said. "Half of the bureaucracy's going to be there. You can't just _ditch_. Even for your…friend."

"The hell I can't," said Marsh, and capped the whiskey. Mei snatched it from him and set it on the bedside table, next to Lan Fan's pills. "We were going to play Risk. It would have been fun."

"No we weren't," said Lan Fan without thinking, and Marsh gave her a pitiful look. Mei rolled her eyes again. Lan Fan wondered how many times she did it in a day. Wondered if she'd ever counted.

"Omega will be fine. The whole place is DNA coded. Nobody's getting in here but you and me." Mei gave Lan Fan a considering look. "Unless she wants to come?"

Lan Fan shook her head. Attend a party with half the bureaucracy when her face was plastered all over the major news networks? It was a miracle Mei hadn't recognized her yet. "I'd rather stay here and code."

"_That's _one I've never heard before," muttered Mei. Then she drew herself up to her full height of not very much. "You," she said, and pushed Marsh towards the door. "Go change. And you," she added, looking back at Lan Fan. "Don't open that hand up again. I'll be waiting in the TV room."

With that, she whisked out of the room, taking the booze with her. Lan Fan felt as though she'd just been struck very hard on the head with a hammer. Marsh looked about the same. Then he shook his head, and glanced back at her.

"I can stay here, you know," he said. "Even if nobody can get in here, hypothetically, there's…stuff."

"I'll be fine." Lan Fan glanced back at her computer. The skeletonkey program for snipersight was still running. She drew a breath, and then said, "I have some banks to hack anyway. I want my money back."

Marsh gave her a funny look. Then he blinked, and marched out of the guest room. She had just enough time to wonder if she'd offended him before he came back holding a very tech-tastic walkie talkie, fixing something in his ear that looked distinctly like a bulb of candlewax. "Here," he said, and gave her the walkie talkie. "Walk me through your hack. I'd feel better," he added, when Lan Fan opened her mouth to protest, "if I can hear you all through the stupid dinner party of stupid. At least that way I know you're not getting dragged to the Fifth Prison by your hair."

Lan Fan searched his face. Then, slowly, she reached out with her right hand, and took the walkie talkie. The smile he gave her was blinding, and did funny things to her heart. Nobody had smiled at her like that in years. Not since her grandfather had died. "I'm on channel three," he said, and tapped the bulb in his ear. She wouldn't have been able to see it if she hadn't known it was already there. "You sure you're okay with everything?"

"I'll be fine." MiracleWorker chimed. "I have stuff to do."

He nodded. She thought he might want to say something more, but down the hall, Mei called, "_You'd better be changing_!" and his mouth twisted.

"The wildcat sister calls." He snapped a salute. "I'll see you in a few hours."

"Yeah," said Lan Fan, and thought of the fire escape. "See you in a few hours."

_After I find snipersight._

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><p><strong>AN:**

Latin/Xerxian phrases used. All but the last were in the last chapter.

Si vis pacem, para bellum. If you want peace, prepare for the war.  
>Dum inter homines sumus, colamus humanitatem. As long as we are among humans, let us be humane.<br>Serva me, servabo te. Save me, and I will save you.  
>Transit umbra lux permanet. Shadow passes, light remains.<br>Forsan miseros meliora sequentur. For those in misery, perhaps better things will follow.  
>Ubi concordia, ibi victoria. Where there is unity, there is the victory.<br>Timendi causa est nescire. Ignorance is the cause of fear.  
>Forest fortuna adiuvat. Fortune favors the brave.<p>

For future reference:  
>"Cave Canem" means "Beware of dog."<br>"Pater Familias" is a Roman term for the (male) head of the family. "Pater" means father.  
>"MiracleWorker" is Lan Fan's laptop.<br>An FTP drive is a digital depository for files that can be shared. For a basic example, DropBox is an FTP drive that you can share with other people/other computers.  
>"WMD" means Weapons of Mass Destruction; Lan Fan's nickname for her hidden terabyte drives.<p>


	3. charisma and complete chaos

**A/N: **A million thanks to MandereLee, who checked over my technobabble and kept me from making some really dumb mistakes. You're the best, darlin'.

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><p><strong>3. charisma and complete chaos<strong>

Welcome back to **T4lker**, **jhavoc**!

You have **3 **[three]new message(s) from **motherboardmama**!

You have joined **motherboardmama**'s chat!

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**motherboardmama **_has joined the chat!_

**motherboardmama (13:12:45):** God, your username is boring.  
><strong>motherboardmama (13:12:53): <strong>You have such a great name, you should own it.  
><strong>motherboardmama (13:12:59): <strong>Make your handle 'wreakhavoc' or something. It'd be awesome.

**jhavoc** _has joined the chat!_

**Jhavoc (13:14:02): **I'm fine with it the way it is, thanks.  
><strong>jhavoc (13:14:11): <strong>So what did you want to ask that you couldn't just come upstairs for?  
><strong>motherboardmama (13:14:18): <strong>Please, that involves stairwells and physical exertion.  
><strong>motherboardmama (13:14:27):<strong> Also you know your desk is basically coated in listening devices, right? You kind of signed away the right to private conversations when you agreed to work for Bradley Industries.  
><strong>jhavoc (13:14:34): <strong>I am more than aware, trust me.  
><strong>jhavoc (13:14:49): <strong>They have keystroke trackers too, but I disabled those a long time ago. I might not know how to do much with a computer, but I'm not completely inept.  
><strong>motherboardmama (13:14:58): <strong>So did you download a program or something?  
><strong>jhavoc (13:15:04):<strong> You could say that.  
><strong>jhavoc (13:15:09): <strong>What's up?  
><strong>motherboardmama (13:15:21):<strong> I was wondering if you'd heard anything from Sheska. I know you two are both working on that new project, the snake or whatever it is, but she hasn't come to work in like a week and I'm getting worried.  
><strong>motherboardmama (13:15:33):<strong> Focker said she's come down with a cold or something but I've been texting her and she never responds, which is odd, because Sheska _always _texts back.  
><strong>jhavoc (13:17:22):<strong> I didn't know you knew Sheska.  
><strong>motherboardmama (13:17:29):<strong> Maria, Sheska and I go out every Friday for drinks and bitchitude. I thought we were famous for it.  
><strong>jhavoc (13:17:37):<strong> I've been out of the loop lately.  
><strong>motherboardmama (13:17:55):<strong> Oh. The hospital. Duh.  
><strong>motherboardmama (13:18:01): <strong>Sorry, that was insensitive of me.  
><strong>jhavoc (13:18:05): <strong>At least you acknowledged it.  
><strong>motherboardmama (13:18:23):<strong> So have you heard from her?  
><strong>jhavoc (13:19:17):<strong> I had an email from her on Tuesday about an old file she was working on, but other than that, nothing.  
><strong>motherboardmama (13:20:02):<strong> Dammit. I'm getting worried about her.  
><strong>jhavoc (13:21:21):<strong> I can find her address for you if you want. I used to carpool with her.  
><strong>motherboardmama (13:22:04):<strong> Thanks. I'll go check on her after work.  
><strong>motherboardmama (13:22:14): <strong>Tagging along?  
><strong>jhavoc (13:24:46): <strong>Wait, I'm invited?  
><strong>motherboardmama (13:25:13): <strong>Why wouldn't you be? Besides, if she doesn't open the door to me, she might open it to you. Especially if you bring work papers.  
><strong>jhavoc (13:25:31): <strong>You frighten me. I'm off at six.  
><strong>motherboardmama (13:25:43):<strong> I'll meet you in the lobby at 6:02.

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There were only so many product evaluations he could fill out before he finally broke and fell back into The Continent.

One good thing about working at Bradley Industries, Havoc thought—perhaps the _only _good thing about Bradley Industries, considering everything—was that even if someone caught him red-handed playing MMOs, they never gave him crap for it the way people had at CIC. For years he'd been hooked on Boneknapper, an MMORPG from Xing that blended horror and cyberpunk in a way that made his skin crawl. The Continent, though, was his newest addiction, a RavenWare creation that he'd illegally boosted off of one of the multitudes of PirateBays he had buried in his head (no point bookmarking them; he'd just get reported). It was less of an RPG than of a blend of real life and fantasy, with levels based off of famous cities around the world. He was halfway up Siggs Mountain in hiking gear (they called it Siggs, but it was obviously Briggs, what with that peak) when a heavy hand landed on his shoulder, and through his headset, he heard a loud voice say, "_Havoc._"

Havoc whipped around, and tore his headphones off. Solf Kimblee was giving him The Look, the one that said, _I am so horrified by your ineptitude that I want to drag you out into the back parking lot and shoot you in both kneecaps._ Or, you know, take his legs off entirely, because shooting him in the kneecaps wouldn't actually do much anymore. Kimblee still looked like he was contemplating it, though. Reason #398 why Havoc hated the smug bastard. (Come to think of it, it was Kimblee who had always disapproved most openly of Havoc's MMOs. Reason #23.) He settled a slightly inquisitive, mostly annoyed expression on his face, and said, "Agent Kimblee. What are you doing here?"

"Such animosity." Kimblee scuffed his palm over his jaw. "Something wrong?"

"No, I just figured that you'd've cleared out by now." Havoc gave him a smile. "Along with the rest of the CIC. Wanted to ask, by the way, do you realize that you leave a trail of slime behind you, or do you just really enjoy being a pain in the ass to clean up after?"

Kimblee tipped him a smile. "Always nice to speak with you, Havoc. Is Edison in?"

"'Is he in,' he says. He's always in. I don't think he's ever out. I wouldn't be surprised if someone found him dead in his office one of these days, with all the extra work he does for Bradley." He tossed his headphones onto his desk and leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. "Which, you know, you can tell from actually looking at his door. Which is right across the corridor, and open, by the way. So why stop and talk to me?"

"Would you believe me if I said it was because I valued your opinion on matters such as these?"

"No way in hell," said Havoc. He took the box of cigarettes off his desk and began to tap it against his dead thigh.

"How disappointing. I would have thought you to have greater faith in humanity, _Agent _Havoc."

"I'm not part of the CIC anymore and you know it. It's why I get to talk crap about you people now." Damn, he wanted a cigarette. He couldn't afford to get written up (again) for smoking in the office (_again_), but he wanted one all the same. He drummed his fingers against the box of cigarettes in three-four time. "What do you want, Kimblee?"

"What makes you think I _want _anything?"

"The fact that you're breathing."

Kimblee laughed. If Havoc hadn't known better, he would have sounded genuinely amused. "That bullet took out more than your legs, didn't it? It destroyed your sense of humor completely."

"Get to the point. I have work to do." He gestured behind him, taking in the pile of folders and The Continent in one fell swoop. "IRL or otherwise."

"Your obsession with the digital realms will never cease to be amusing." Kimblee stroked his jaw. "I was wondering if you had heard anything from your old—what did Mustang call her, bishop? No, she was the queen in his little chess game, wasn't she?"

"Agent Hawkeye?" said Havoc, and shook his head. "Nope. Haven't seen her."

"Are you certain?" said Kimblee, his eyes going sharp. "Because as I recall, from her file and yours, you were fairly close—at least, until Mustang's dishonorable discharge."

"His kick in the ass out the door, you mean," said Havoc, unable to resist. "But no. I haven't seen her, heard from her, had any secret messages from her, or in any way been in contact with her since I was hospitalized. Since _before _I was hospitalized, considering it was in her breakout that your damn snipers hit me with friendly fire. And even if I had," he added, "you can take all your questions and shove them up your ass, because I wouldn't tell you anything."

Kimblee's mouth tightened. Then he flexed his hands, and put them behind his back, holding on to his stupid hat between two long fingers. "I see."

Havoc waited for the inevitable arrest, but it did not come. Kimblee was just studying him. After a moment or two, Havoc jerked his thumb at his computer again. "Did you have anything else you wanted to say, or can I get back to my digital shenanigans? Because I was kind of seducing this really hot succubus."

"No further questions," said Kimblee, and Havoc put his hands to the wheels of his chair, so he could back up and turn around. "But," Kimblee continued, "if you ever speak to me like that again, I will have you arrested. Is that clear?"

Havoc grit his teeth, and made himself smile. "Crystal clear, Agent Asshole."

He was fumbling for his headset again when Kimblee put a hand to the back of his chair, leaned forward so his breath was hot against Havoc's ear, and said, "I wanted to say—I was sorry to hear about the accident. In more ways than one. He may not have worked for the CIC anymore, but Roy Mustang was a good agent. He'll be sorely missed."

"Yeah," said Havoc, not turning around. He wished for a cigarette. "You're telling me."

Kimblee dipped his head, put his hands in his pockets, and swept down the hall into Edison's office. There was a sudden burst of voices from inside, and then he'd closed the door behind him. Havoc waited until he was certain no one was paying attention before letting out a breath. Across the way, Breda poked his head out.

"Yo," he said. Havoc turned in his chair.

"Hey."

Breda jerked his head at the door. "Smoke break?"

"You read my goddamn mind," said Havoc, and before he was even clear of the room, he had the cigarette between his teeth.

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He could tell before they were even two floors down that Mei was going to interrogate him.

It wasn't that hard to read. Mei fidgeted when she wanted something. She bounced on the balls of her feet, she fluffed the ends of her many braids, she twined her headphone cords through her fingers, and generally burned off enough energy to power a small jet. She did a good job holding back this time, though; she made it all the way to the parking garage and to Daddy's precious limo without doing more than nibble her lip and play with her dangling earrings.

Of course, the car itself was a very different story.

"So," said Mei, as soon as he'd slammed the door. "Your friend is interesting."

"Oh, god," said Ling, and propped his chin in his hand. "Is this where you question me about my intentions? Because she seriously just needs somewhere to lay low for a few days, and since she knows I have room—"

"God." Mei hit the button for the divider. It was only once their father's extra-special bullet-proof tinted-glass window was up between them and the driver that she gave him a disgusted look. "Defensive much? I was just saying she was interesting. Calm down." She paused for a moment, and then added, "She's taking antidepressants."

"Yeah, I noticed." Ling lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "I don't see how it matters." Though it would, he realized; the CIC would have worked that out by this point, and be lying in wait if she came to refill her prescription. If _anyone _came to fill her prescription. He thought of the veritable phalanx of drugs in his mother's medicine cabinet, and wondered if something there would be a decent replacement. "So maybe she has some anxiety issues. Considering what's happened to her, I wouldn't be surprised."

Mei made a noise that was more thoughtful than anything, and then pulled a compact from her purse. She opened it, studying her eyelashes in the mirror. "Usually Quashers are used for people with bipolar disorder, more than run-of-the-mill anxiety issues."

"I don't want to know how you know that."

"I like memorizing drug names and purposes when I'm done with my homework."

"Something is very wrong with you."

"Hey, it helped you, didn't it?" She fumbled a tube of mascara from her clutch, and began to touch up her makeup. "Did she tell you?"

"Is it my business?" Ling said, and Mei scoffed.

"I don't know. Is it?"

"Just as an FYI—psychology? Not for you. Stick to the ER."

"I plan to. I'm not patient enough to coach people through their problems." She dabbed at her eyelashes. "So can I at least assume that you know her from the internet? Because, you know, I'm pretty sure that 'Omega' isn't something anyone would actually name their child. Or, you know. Themselves. Because it basically means _last_."

"That's how she introduced herself when we met, and that's what she calls herself. Whether it's the name on her birth certificate doesn't matter all that much." Her actual name was Lan Fan, he knew. Lan Fan Zhang. The CIC had had her name, rank, and serial number plastered across every major news network in Amestria, including the weird folk music news channels that were in somewhere in the thousands. Curse his sister's addiction to cable. He'd already decided to think of her as 'Omega,' though. If she wanted him to know her name, she would have told him. Or she _would _tell him. Either way.

Mei blinked a few times, peered closer into the mirror for some reason, and then snapped the compact shut. "I see," she said, in the voice that meant _ask me why I'm saying that_. Ling didn't really want to get into a snarl-fest with her, though, so he turned to stare out the window. Dublith could scrape a semi-decent rush hour when it wanted, but since it wasn't quite five o'clock yet, the streets were still mostly clear. The driver (a Xing man Ling didn't recognize; his father must have had a fit and hired all-new chauffeurs again) knew enough about Centralis roads to be leery of the carpool lane, though, so good on him. Ling tugged absently at the tie that Mei had forced him into at the door (she'd only told him not to untie it, hadn't said a damn thing about how tight he was supposed to keep it) and tapped against the comm in his ear canal once before yanking out his MP3 player. The noises of the car were a bit too loud for him to be able to tell just was Omega was doing; besides, she hadn't said anything since he'd left. He wondered if she was actually paying attention, or if she'd flung the walkie-talkie into a drawer somewhere.

"Is he going to be there?" he asked, once he watched through two songs play on mute. Mei eyed him.

"Probably not. He's still out at the factory near Briggs, last I heard, and that was about an hour ago. Not even planes move _that _quickly." She pursed her lips in thought. "Raven will be there. So will the Bradleys, probably, unless Mr. Bradley decides to work late again. I know Dad invited some people from CIC, since they're going to be the people who primarily use Ricochet. I don't know who, though."

"I still can't believe you know the name of the program," said Ling. "Didn't you fail all your comp-sci classes in smart-person school?"

She blushed. "Shut up. Besides, I should at least know what my brother's first big break is _called_. What's really unbelievable is that you sold it to the CIC. You've been talking crap about them since I was nine."

Ling said nothing. Mei snorted, and looked down at her phone again. "Omega fits in your clothes?"

"They're a bit big, but we're the same general size, yes."

"Long bones, then. But she's so skinny…" Mei chewed her lip. "And she doesn't seem to be the type to like girly clothes." She made a note on her phone, and then said, "Do you know how she cut her hand?"

"She mentioned something about having to jump through a window."

"Because of her boyfriend?" she asked, and then, before he could respond, "Charming man." For a minute or two, the only sound was the tap of Mei's long fingernails on the screen of her RavenPhone. "There was still rust in the cut. I cleaned it out as best I could, but I'd prefer giving her a tetanus shot sooner rather than later. Do you mind making a stop at UMHC on the way back from PhoenixCorp? I can grab some medication there."

"Aw, Mei. You're breaking the law for me. That's so sweet of you."

"If they catch me," she said, not looking up from her screen, "I'll say it was blackmail."

He clasped his hands under his chin. "Best sister _ever_."

She snorted, but said nothing else. He waited until he was absolutely certain she was immersed in her task—whatever it was; with Mei, it could be anything from surfing secondhand clothing sites to taking vocabulary tests for all the muscles in the human body—before he tugged his phone free of his pocket, and activated Ricochet.

Ricochet was—or had been, before his father had heard about it—his baby. He'd based it, at least in part, off of some of the snippets of transmogrifier that IronChild had showed him once, but where transmogrifier disguised a hunter, Ricochet illuminated the location of the prey. It was, basically, an extraordinarily hyper-alert anti-malware system that scanned, identified, and tracked all incoming files, programs, or individuals that entered into the domain controlled by Ricochet. He'd originally intended it to be used _against _the CIC, somehow, but his father (who had confiscated his laptop for the fiftieth time and then for some godforsaken reason had run a cracking algorithm on it) had uncovered what he'd written so far, and demanded that he finish it for the CIC.

What Ling was giving them today wasn't actually the best copy, but it looked good enough to fool even a thorough going-over by CIC techs. He had the only complete version of the program, which was kept in its entirety on his heavily modified RavenPhone (now free of all bugs and tracking devices!) and on his laptop. A secondary app, Shrapnel, would send him a text if anyone hit Ricochet tripwires on his primary PC. It would also tell him if anyone even accessed his computer without his permission; turning the computer on would send him an emergency alert. He wouldn't think it of Omega, but he hadn't come this far by trusting anyone at the drop of a hat. Neither Ricochet nor Shrapnel showed any warnings, so he stuffed his phone back into his pocket, and went back to staring out of the window.

It was a testament to Ling's own (somewhat arrogant, occasionally bitter, and entirely necessary) disconnect from his father's company that he didn't actually know where they were going. He worked it out once they turned onto the highway only to depart from it six minutes later, onto an exit marked as "Financial District." This was a personal party—well, as personal as parties like this _could _be—and there were a multitude of companies representing themselves, from the sound of it, which meant either the Hotel Grand (owned by PhoenixCorp, run by Grands) or the Serenity Gardens, which had less to do with actual flora and more with a lot of green food coloring.

"There'll be a delivery tomorrow morning at about eleven for you," said Mei, and turned off her phone. The car turned onto Globe Street. Serenity Gardens, then. He tugged at his tie again. "Omega's clothes. _Please _be conscious by then."

"If I'm not, I'm sure you'll make me."

Mei drummed her fingernails against her thigh. The car rolled to a stop; before he could open the door, she turned, and caught his wrist. "Ling," she said. "You've been taking your meds, right?"

Ling nearly snarled at the implication. _Of course. Of course I've been taking my goddamn medication. Why wouldn't I take it? Do you think I _enjoy _it?_ Then he closed his eyes for a moment, settled himself again. "Yes, Mei," he said, and let a smile twist his mouth. "Yes, I've been taking my medication. Wouldn't want to embarrass dear old Dad at a company party _again_, am I right?"

Mei's fingers tightened on his wrist. "That's not why I asked," she said in a low voice. "And you know it."

He searched her face. Then he sighed a little. "I'm fine, Mei," he said. "The new meds are working. Well, they're working better than the old ones, anyway. Don't worry about me."

She searched his eyes. Mei let him go. "Have you told Omega?"

"I wasn't sure she'd be there long enough for it to matter." He paused. "If it becomes necessary, I will. Like always. Besides," he added, and opened his door. "It's not like I've told her about me."

He shut the car door before she could work up the words to respond.

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**d3lta_f0rce**, welcome back to **TrutherGate**!

Your last visit was [today].

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Logged in as: **d3lta_f0rce **(Log out)

**Introductions  
><strong>d3lta, you're a dick. Go away.  
><strong>Forum Rules<br>**DICKS LIKE D3LTA OUGHT TO BEWARE.  
><strong>Cave Canem<br>**Turd alert.**  
>Discussion<br>**Blackmail material galore. Also, stupid jokes.

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><strong>658 user(s) active in the past 15 minutes  
>0 members are celebrating a birthday today<br>Our members have made a total of 121496 posts  
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>Most users ever online was 933 on <strong>June 23, 03:43 [AKA the Date Which Will Live Into Infamy (DWWLII)]<strong>

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Cave Canem

Topic Title: **Pater Familias  
><strong>Topic Description: **stalactite avalanche**

**Posted on Wednesday, July 17, 04:32:33.**

**Comments:**

_**Response to Topic: **_**Pater Familias  
>Posted on Wednesday, July 17, 09:54:19<br>Subject: **just to clarify  
><strong>librarygirl: <strong>Responding to this is kosher, right? MetKid isn't gonna wipe my harddrive?

_**Response to Topic: **_**Pater Familias  
>Posted on Wednesday, July 17, 09:57:23<br>Subject: **god  
><strong>MetKid: <strong>you all seem to think im the goddamn devil or something  
>its fine say whatever the hell you want<p>

_**Response to Topic: **_**Pater Familias  
>Posted on Wednesday, July 17, 10:02:46<br>Subject: **I'm sorry  
><strong>librarygirl: <strong>I just wanted to make sure.  
>I don't know about snipersight or WhiskerTeeth01, but there were a few handles hacked by Pater last week. Mostly blackhats working out of devils_lair. No one's heard from any of them since. The only handle I remember is python_skin.<br>And you can be somewhat intimidating when people don't know you very well.

_**Response to Topic: **_**Pater Familias  
>Posted on Wednesday, July 17, 11:17:32<br>Subject: **(no subject)  
><strong>MetKid: <strong>all of you are ridiculous  
>i only set beansproutgirl on you *once*<p>

_**Response to Topic: **_**Pater Familias  
>Posted on Wednesday, July 17, 11:26:43<br>Subject: **Oh dear  
><strong>IronChild: <strong>Once was enough. DWWLII will never die.

_**Response to Topic: **_**Pater Familias  
>Posted on Wednesday, July 17, 11:27:49<br>Subject: **(no subject)  
><strong>MetKid: <strong>all of you suck

_**Response to Topic: **_**Pater Familias  
>Posted on Wednesday, July 17, 12:32:29<br>Subject: **Nose to the ground  
><strong>dog0eat0dog: <strong>I heard that there are some people on the net who scope out targets for Pater before it strikes. Like scouts, you know. Only one that seems to be a stooge for sure is lilith07.

_**Response to Topic: **_**Pater Familias  
>Posted on Wednesday, July 17, 12:33:16<br>Subject: **scenthound  
><strong>fisheyelense: <strong>I heard WhiskerTeeth01 was picked up by the CIC, but no one knows how or when.

_**Response to Topic: **_**Pater Familias  
>Posted on Wednesday, July 17, 12:43:37<br>Subject: **armstrong  
><strong>cordlet:<strong> Apparently, Alex Louis Armstrong always gets his man. There have been rumblings of dissention though. Things you hear as a clerk. He's not open to bribery or violence, though. Good luck, whoever you are. And good luck to om3ga; they're gonna need it.

**154 more comments…**

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The noises coming through the walkie talkie were more like a horror movie than whatever was actually happening. Muffled voices, static, and the clink of metal on porcelain (a noise that had always made her hair stand on end). Marsh hadn't said anything, and she hadn't remembered to turn on the damn walkie talkie until about twenty minutes ago anyway. He was probably waiting for her to talk. Lan Fan wasn't in the mood.

In the two and a half hours since Marsh and Mei Chang the Hurricane had left the flat, she'd gone through all of snipersight's old haunts, lurked on private networks, sent out feelers with every contact she had, but she'd come up with exactly nothing. It wasn't often that she failed, let alone failed quite so spectacularly, but snipersight had gone to ground (or other, worse possibilities—was cut off from internet entirely, for reasons of either imprisonment or exile, and either one made her stomach churn uncomfortably) and not even om3ga had been able to root her out. Lan Fan left a few messages on T4lker for Ed, mostly inquiries about messages left on TrutherGate (lilith07?) and then went back to her slow crawl through the depths of the net. Some days she was honestly surprised at how long the Great Firewall had been kept up. There were so many sodden bits now it should have collapsed around its ears.

"You through the firewalls yet?"

Lan Fan scoffed. "Please. It's like you don't even know me." She'd helped the First Bank of Centralis check their firewalls; she knew exactly how to break them open if she wanted. She went quiet for a minute or two, scrolling through managerial options for private accounts. _Full statements, client information—settings, that's it. _She would need a highly-ranked username and password in order to remove the ban from her account, but that wasn't her plan. The ban was, inherently, flawed, a crack in the system that she hadn't thought to point out, because to be entirely honest, it hadn't mattered to her at the time. Managerial bans like this only dealt with people attempting to access the funds from the outside, not from within the intranet itself. As long as she had a dummy handle and passcode, she could move her money wherever she liked. Lan Fan typed in the routing number for her secondary account, the one she'd built illegally and now the only one she carried cards for, and watched the transfer go through. It didn't take long. She didn't have a lot of money to spare. Then she heard Marsh humming under his breath, and remembered that he was on the other line. She uploaded a virus—nothing too dangerous, just enough to smash up their list of transactions for the past week—and left the system. "Aren't you at a dinner?"

"Dinner comes after the schmoozefest," he said. In spite of herself, she wondered who was there, at this party for a program that Marsh had never mentioned, which was—she bit her cheek—being celebrated by some sort of big company group. She typed _Mei Chang company _into a search engine and hit enter. "Besides, I'm sitting on my own in the corner. If I get a reputation for talking to myself, maybe then Mei will stop bothering me about coming to these things."

Unsurprisingly, considering it was Amestria, most of the search results were for gossip rags. Anything worthwhile was blocked. She considered using 0Ground, an underground engine that catalogued everything the Great Firewall blocked, but there it was, her answer, the fourth or fifth hit. _Centralis Weekly. ...__**Mei Chang**__, daughter of PhoenixCorp's Yimou Gong, attended last night's debacle at the Fifth Lab Club in_— There was a picture of the girl who had sewn up her hand, in a tight pink minidress, her hair all done up with colored lights. Marsh was nowhere in sight. Lan Fan chewed the inside of her lip and then searched _Yimou Gong_. She'd heard of PhoenixCorp, of course—who hadn't heard of PhoenixCorp, especially after the last big protest?—but not lately. She certainly hadn't heard that Yimou Gong had children. "You talk to yourself a lot, then, Marsh?" she asked without thinking, and Marsh laughed.

"More often than I'd like. What are you even doing? Any progress?"

"Not really." Mei Chang, Mei Chang—Mei was everywhere. Marsh was not. Lan Fan pinched her lower lip between her first two fingers, and then said, "So when were you gonna mention who your dad is?"

There was a pause. Then Marsh scoffed. "I should have expected you to look him up a while ago, Omega. You're slipping."

"I think I get a free pass, considering I had to have my hand sewn up a few hours ago." She clicked on a picture of Yimou Gong. He looked like Marsh, if an older, mustachioed, grumpier Marsh could ever exist.

"No excuse." He hesitated. "You're not gonna yell at me?"

"Why?" She worried her thumbnail, ignoring the tug of pain from her palm. "You clearly hate him just as much as the rest of us. Besides, if you were going to tell him about any of us, you would have, years ago. We'd all have been caught a long time ago if liangshan_marsh was a double-agent." She paused. "We're on a secure channel?"

"Of course we're on a secure channel," said Marsh, and she thought he might have been rolling his eyes. She was really much better at telling people's moods when she didn't have to look them in the face. "I built this myself, with Ed's help. No one has this frequency but us."

"Hm." She drummed her fingers against the edge of MiracleWorker, and then closed out of Yimou Gong's biography. She didn't need to know how he grew up. All she really cared about was that last year over five hundred people were injured or killed in his tech factories and the major news channels hadn't breathed a goddamn word. "Does anyone else know?"

"Ed," said Marsh. She nodded without thinking, and waited for another name, but there was none forthcoming. Then Marsh said, "You're the only Cavern Children I've met face to face since all of this started. It's need-to-know information, and so far, only the pair of you have needed to know. Though IronChild might know something about it. Ed tells him freaking everything."

"Well," said Lan Fan. "That kind of sucks."

"Tell me about it," said Marsh, and his voice was low and harsh. "I'm the one that has to live with him hanging over me, remember?"

Lan Fan fell silent for a moment. She licked her lips. Before she could ask—_do you hate him? Your father_—she heard a sputter of static, and then Marsh said, "—been a while, Ingrid." Lan Fan made a face, and tossed the walkie talkie onto the bedspread. Unfortunately, it landed face up, so she could hear every word.

"—have you been doing?" The girl's voice was a little muffled, but it was light and sweet, and she had a sudden image of a waif-like nymph-girl in a pretty dress with her hands behind her back and big blue eyes with long lashes. A child star, maybe. She had the sort of little-girl-lost voice that the movie industry loved. "You're a big programmer now! It seems so strange, I just remember seeing you at school sometimes, always sitting in the corner."

"I still sit in the corner, I just do it at home."

skeletonkey was done. Lan Fan opened the PDF, only half paying attention to whatever shallow rigmarole was going on at the other end of the channel. The first page was all black, with three words in red—_YOUR EYES ONLY_—and beneath it, nine words in white. _An Investigation Into The Cavern Children Phenomenon, Part Four._ She scrolled, blindly. _The Cavern Children Phenomenon? What the hell? Why didn't Ed see this? Didn't he search—_but the PDF had been locked, and buried, and locked again, she remembered, looking back through the file chain, and besides, it was a scan, not an actual, editable document. Unless he'd done a very advanced search, there was no way Ed would have found this.

_Was this what Pater came after me for?_

No, if this was the tripwire file, then Pater would be after Ed, too. Since MetKid hadn't blinked offline yet, this had to be something else. She worried her lip between her teeth.

After going through the table of contents—_i. Project Employees; ii. Subject; iii. Cavern Children—_she finally just skipped to page sixteen, _vii. snipersight_. A photograph of a blonde woman with reddish-brown eyes and a sharp nose dominated the right-hand side of the page. On the left:

_Name: Riza Hawkeye  
>Age: 27<br>Height: 168 cm  
>Weight: 62 kg<br>Hair color: Blonde  
>Eye color: Brown<br>Notes: Daughter of Berthold Hawkeye (dec.); suspected only child, unconfirmed. Attended St. Mara's Boarding Academy for Accomplished Females; graduated magna cum laude from University of Amestria, Centralis. Agent of Centralis Intelligence Coalition, Counterterrorism Division (four years). Previously employed in Cyber Division (three years). Holds multiple certificates in marksmanship; trained sniper. Held in custody at Unit 339. Escaped 24 May. Current location unknown._

_UN: snipersight (known), firetrigger (unconfirmed), tanaka_takako (unconfirmed), hayate212 (unconfirmed). Others possible but unidentified. _

_Known Affiliates:  
>-MetKid (alias metaltwerp [unconfirmed], alias poisonous_flamel [unconfirmed], alias satanicmilk [unconfirmed]; other alias' possible but unknown.). Identity unknown.<br>-IronChild (alias the_iron_ripoff [unconfirmed]; other alias' possible but unknown). Identity unknown.  
>-heatcol (no other known alias). Identity unknown.<br>-om3ga (alias one-eye [unconfirmed]). Identity unknown._

She felt like the bottom of her stomach had just been carved out. Lan Fan closed her eyes and took two deep breaths. They knew who om3ga was, now, that was for sure. And snipersight—she swallowed hard. _Riza Hawkeye_, that was her name. snipersight had broken out of CIC custody. Unit 339 was legendary, supposedly unbreakable. No wonder the CIC hadn't publicized her escape. However she'd managed to get out, she hadn't been seen since, not by the CIC, not by the Cavern Children, not by anybody.

She couldn't stand it. Lan Fan clawed her way off the bed, wet down a washcloth in the sink, and wiped her face. Her pupils were blown wide from nerves. She took another Quasher, because why the hell not, and then settled on the cool wood floor, pulling MiracleWorker off the mattress to rest hot as sin in her lap. After a second or two, she turned to grab the walkie talkie too. "Hey," she said, "Marsh."

"What?" said Marsh, and she heard Ingrid What's-Her-Face pause.

"Something wrong?"

"No, sorry. I was just—you said something about skiing? I'm getting a headache, the noise is a bit…" Marsh trailed off. Lan Fan cleared her throat.

"If I'm interrupting, then feel free to tell me to shut up."

Marsh said nothing. She thought she heard him scoff under his breath. Ingrid What's-Her-Face kept on babbling about skiing and snow slopes. "—_swore _I'd never make it down, but of course he was wrong, I'm a much better skier than Dad is—have you ever been skiing?"

"I haven't had the pleasure," said Marsh, in such plummy tones that it about made Lan Fan want to gag. "Though I'm sure both you and Mr. Raven are excellent."

"Ingrid _Raven_?" said Lan Fan in spite of herself. "_Ingrid Raven _is chatting you up?" She'd seen pictures of Ingrid Raven—gorgeous coffee skin, ridiculously long legs, and a head full of microbraids, each one a different shade of the rainbow. "I feel like I should be popping a bottle of champagne. Or pinching myself awake, because this is not real life."

"Oh, I'm sure that's not true," said Ingrid. Marsh laughed.

"Surprisingly," said Marsh—to her, Lan Fan thought, not to Ingrid. "I'm all thumbs."

"Well," said Ingrid. "That's all right. You're better at other things. Like computer programming, you know? I'd be a total mess in front of the computer, I failed all my comp-sci courses in school."

"You know what they say," Marsh said to Ingrid Raven. "When C++ is your hammer, everything starts to look like a thumb."

"Hey," said Lan Fan, and started her _tennisracket _program. Whoever tried to track her IP address would be directed straight to the South Pole, but not before being bounced to six different cities on four different continents. "Watch it, Javapunk."

"I don't understand what that means," said Ingrid. Her voice came through as staticky and young. "Is it a computer joke?"

"God," said Lan Fan. There was something viciously entertaining at talking to Marsh when he couldn't actually respond without looking like a schizo. "What the hell kind of party are you in, anyway? _Debutantes' Daily_?"

"Kind of," said Marsh, to both of them. Probably. "Ingrid, will you excuse me for a minute? Bathroom."

She could practically hear Ingrid Raven blushing over the commlink. "Oh. Um. Of course."

"You take your comm out if you're seriously gonna do that," said Lan Fan without thinking, and keyed in the URL for 0Ground's secure server. "I'm not gonna listen to you piss."

"Charming," said Marsh under his breath, but she thought he might have been smiling. "Nah, it's nicer outside. Less slippage."

"Slippage?"

"The sheer amount of smarm in here is making it difficult to keep your feet."

_Ugh_. This was precisely why she spent all her time in dingy motel rooms and even dingier apartments. At least then she wouldn't have to schmooze for a company, no matter how much they paid her. Plus there was the whole nepotistic corruption element.

0Ground was quiet, for once. She keyed in her search parameters—"snipersight" "riza hawkeye" "hawkeye"—and hit enter just as Marsh said, "So what did you want to tell me?"

Lan Fan chewed her lip. "What do you mean?"

"You're the one who called me, remember," said Marsh. "What'd you find?"

"I didn't find snipersight, if that's what you mean." She pinched her lower lip again. "Her name's Riza Hawkeye. Bradley Industries had a whole background on her. CIC files, everything. They're in way deeper with the CIC than we thought."

"Riza," said Marsh. "I think I've heard of the Hawkeyes. A man, though, not a woman. A inventor, I think. He and Bradley had a fight decades ago because he wouldn't join BI."

This was news. Lan Fan added a new keyword ("berthold hawkeye") and then said, "She was held in 339. She escaped. No one's seen her since."

Marsh said nothing for a long moment. Then he let out a whistle. "Sand in their eyes. Good old 'sight."

They were both quiet for a moment.

"So," said Marsh. "Am I gonna come back to find you gone?"

Lan Fan didn't quite know what to say. Finally, she licked her lips. "Why?"

"Considering everything, I'd've thought it'd be your first instinct," he said, lightly. "Safer on the outside than with a collaborator, right?"

Lan Fan stared at her screen. 0Ground was working more slowly than normal; hits came up on the screen one at a time, rather than all at once. (Then again, 0Ground was dependent on a multitude of encryption programs and however many computers were on the network at once; each info package was broken into a million smaller pieces and stored on separate computers, all mixed up, and sometimes it took a while to reassimilate them.) Then she cleared her throat. "I dunno. I was thinking I'd be the snake in the eagle's nest."

"You mean like a cuckoo chick?"

"I meant what I said."

Marsh hummed. He almost sounded like a purring cat. "Well, then. I feel obliged to inform you that I will be returning by ten o'clock. If I have to deal with this for much longer there's going to be a mass homicide. Also, Mei ordered you clothes."

"But—"

"The wildcat does not take kindly to objections from any quarter. Just wear them. It'll shut her up. You don't have to keep them if you don't want." There was a rush of air. "I have to go back inside. No more snarking, all right? You'll make me choke on my champagne and then Mei will get huffy and I'll have to explain and I just don't have the energy."

"Fine," said Lan Fan, who was still stuck on this whole notion of clothes. Then, because she was tired and stupid, she added, "But only if Ingrid doesn't leave herself open."

Marsh snorted, but that was the last word on the matter. Lan Fan put the walkie talkie back up on the bed. Even in its horror-movie weirdness, the noises were a little comforting. More than that, there was a little thrill in overhearing these words, the conversations of the rich and powerful, the chattering of the men who ruled their world. _I'm here_, she thought, as she heard Raven's very recognizable baritone. _I'm here and you don't even know it._ It was basically any hacktivist's wet dream. She might even start recording it.

0Ground finally chimed an okay, and she started going through results. It was slow work, irritating in its detail orientation—she'd written code that hadn't taken this much focus—and it yielded little, aside from one or two interesting tidbits on snipersight's work before the Cavern. On the third page, there was a small website, one that read _Timer_. It had no summary. Lan Fan leaned back against the bed and clicked on it. The page was just as simple, all black, with a white countdown clock, like those sites that regularly (and erroneously) predicted the end of the world. At the bottom of the page was five words in plain type, and it made the hair stand up on the back of her neck.

_We will get them back._

The countdown clock read 48 days.

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Welcome back to T4lker, **d3lta_f0rce!**

**IronChild, meatgrinder, heatcol, **and **marshmallowman **would like to add you as a Chattie.  
><strong>marshmallowman, MetKid, IronChild, <strong>and **heatcol **are online.

You have **six** [6] new message(s) from **MetKid**.**  
><strong>You have **two** [2] new message(s) from **heatcol**.**  
><strong>You have **two** [2] new message(s) from **IronChild**.

You have been invited to a chatroom titled **semper idem**.  
>Would you like to join <strong>semper idem<strong>?

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You are now Chatties with **IronChild**!**  
><strong>You are now Chatties with **meatgrinder**!  
>You are now Chatties with <strong>heatcol<strong>!  
>You are now Chatties with <strong>marshmallowman<strong>!

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You have joined the chatroom **semper idem**!

**MetKid **_has been invited to join _**semper idem**!  
><strong>IronChild<strong>_ has been invited to join _**semper idem**!  
><strong>heatcol <strong>_has been invited to join _**semper idem**!**  
>meatgrinder <strong>_has been invited to join _**semper idem**!

**marshmallowman (20:11:34): **just building this for a new cavern  
><strong>marshmallowman (20:11:38): <strong>kind of a bad replacement but itll do for the moment  
><strong>marshmallowman (20:11:42): <strong>hohenheims rules apply  
><strong>marshmallowman (20:11:48): <strong>invite whoever you want but if they snitch ill ruin you

**MetKid **_has joined the chatroom_ **semper idem**!  
><strong>IronChild <strong>_has joined the chatroom _**semper idem**!  
><strong>heatcol <strong>_has joined the chatroom _**semper idem**!  
><strong>heatcol <strong>_has invited _**hawtdogger** _to the chatroom _**semper idem**!  
><strong>hawtdogger <strong>_has joined the chatroom _**semper idem**!

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You have joined **IronChild**'s chat!

**IronChild **_has joined the chat!_

**IronChild (14:49:55): **MetKid told me you were all right. It'd be nice to hear from you personally, though; I get worried even if I believe him. Things have been sticky over here, no matter what MetKid said. Pater hasn't come sniffing, but jaloux hasn't left us alone since the whole Bradley Industries hack, and it looks like he has friends. Wrathling is someone to watch out for.  
><strong>IronChild (14:50:32)<strong>: Be careful out there, Lan Fan.

**IronChild **_has left the chat!  
><em>**d3lta_f0rce **_has joined the chat!_

**d3lta_f0rce (21:36:01): **thanks  
><strong>d3lta_f0rce (21:36:04): <strong>you too al

**d3lta_f0rce **_has left the chat!_

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You have joined **MetKid**'s chat!

**MetKid **_has joined the chat!_

**MetKid (15:22:31): **dunno if ironchild told you but merry hell is raining on our heads  
><strong>MetKid (15:22:39): <strong>someones hunting for your old om3ga handle  
><strong>MetKid (15:22:43): <strong>put them off the scent but theyll come back  
><strong>MetKid (15:22:47): <strong>tried to hack cic for you but it backfired as usual  
><strong>MetKid (15:22:59)<strong>: oh and tell marsh hes a dick for me  
><strong>MetKid (15:23:03): <strong>hes not answering his goddamn phone

**MetKid **_has left the chat!  
><em>**d3lta_f0rce **_has joined the chat!_

**d3lta_f0rce (21:36:19): **tell him yourself, i'm not his keeper

**MetKid **_has joined the chat!_

**MetKid (21:36:49): **meow  
><strong>MetKid (21:36:54): <strong>you meet his sister yet  
><strong>d3lta_f0rce (21:37:02): <strong>yeah, i like her a lot. you two should date.  
><strong>MetKid (21:37:05): <strong>screw you lan fan  
><strong>MetKid (21:37:07): <strong>go away im working  
><strong>d3lta_f0rce (21:37:12): <strong>didn't know infomercials about height gain took so much effort nowadays

**MetKid** _has left the chat!_

**d3lta_f0rce (21:37:15): **dork

**d3lta_f0rce**_ has left the chat!_

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You have joined **heatcol**'s chat!

**heatcol **_has joined the chat!_

**heatcol (13:21:48): **MetKid said you were looking for information on snipersight and WhiskerTeeth01.  
><strong>heatcol (13:21:59): <strong>Everything I have so far is in the attached torrent. Watch your back. [link]

**heatcol **_has left the chat!  
><em>**d3lta_f0rce **_has joined the chat!_

**d3lta_f0rce (21:51:39):** thanks.  
><strong>d3lta_f0rce (21:51:55): <strong>i'll let you know what I find.

**heatcol** _has joined the chat!_

**heatcol (21:52:21): **I would expect nothing else.

**heatcol** _has left the chat!_  
><strong>d3lta_f0rce <strong>_has left the chat!_


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